ADRIAN -- During the 2009 cross country season, Saline High School’s Alyssa Cummings came out of nowhere to make a name for herself as the No. 3 runner on the Hornets’ Division 1 state championship team.

Now a sophomore, Cummings has assumed the No. 1 spot and isn’t sneaking up on anyone anymore, but she’s still running past them.

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At the first Southeastern Conference Jamboree of the season, Cummings took medalist honors with a time of 19 minutes, 35 seconds at Heritage Park in Adrian.

“It feels really amazing actually. I never thought I’d get to this level this soon,” Cummings said of her first place finish, her third of the season. “I don’t get too worked up about it, I just keep pushing myself.”

The Hornets had four more runners finish in the top-16 to finish in first place with 47 points. Pioneer’s Katherine Hoevet finished in second place in a time of 19:37 and the Pioneers finished second as a team with 79 points.

Huron’s Annie-Norah Beveridge and Karyn Rapundalo finished behind Hoevet in third and fourth place with times of 19:44 and 20:08, respectively.

“(Beveridge and Rapundolo) they’re returning all-staters, but in a field like this, every team has an all-stater coming back it seems, so it’s always a little unnerving to see how the race is going to unfold,” said Huron coach Kevin Behmer.

As much as Behmer was pleased with his frontrunners’ finish, he was more impressed with his young team’s third place finish with 86 points.

“Those two were kind of our known quantities coming back. We’re really excited about the rest of our bunch, all the way down to 10,” Behmer said. “We had a lot varsity rookies in there and they showed a little spunk and competitiveness that we’re really excited about.”

Rounding out the top-five was Skyline sophomore Lauren Halpern (20:10). The Eagles finished in seventh place with 151 points, behind Bedford (114), Dexter (125) and Monroe (148), and ahead of Chelsea (194), Lincoln (256), Tecumseh (284), Adrian (329) and Ypsilanti (377).

“It felt really good as a team,” Halpern said. “I feel like Skyline we’re coming up and we’re doing a lot better as a team, we’ve just been pushing each other and definitely competing a lot better.”

Pete Cunningham covers sports for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at petercunningham@annarbor.com or by phone at 734-623-2563. Follow him on Twitter @petcunningham.