The rolling, sometimes steep, hills of Leesburg’s Oatlands Invitational are a wake up call for a lot of runners.

“This is the race that snaps you back into cross country,” said Abbey Green, a Walter Johnson junior who finished second. “This is where you get some great competition on a hard course and really test yourself.”

Green and the Wildcats (third place), the three-time defending Maryland 4A champions, did so against 46 other teams and trailed only George C. Marshall and Osbourn Park. With five runners in the top 50, Marshall built a 30-point lead over Osbourn Park, and was led by junior Heather Holt in 17:52 over Green’s 18:17 on the 5k course.

In the boys’ race, Rohann Asfaw pushed the pace early, which his Richard Montgomery coach Davy Rodgers said wasn’t the initial plan, but Asfaw said a slower pace demanded it.

“I’m not afraid to take the lead early on if I have to,” he said. “I’m going to run my own race and sometimes that’s what it will take to go fast.”

At the end of the second mile, nearing a long climb, Loudoun Valley juniors Peter Morris and Colton Bogucki caught him, with plans to take him out on the way back down, but Asfaw was already planning to push down the hill. He whittled his chase pack down to Morris, then pulled away on the series of stretches and turns to pull out a 15:47-15:50 win, what was roughly 15 seconds faster than his race last year.

“I feel a lot better after the race is over this year,” he said. “Going up the hill didn’t seem to slow me down the way it has before.”

Morris, for his effort, was five seconds off of his track 5k PR, set in the heat of June. He had run 16:41 at his conference meet last October.

“I’ve gotten a lot better with my uphill running,” he said. “I like to make my move based on how other people are doing on the hills.”

Loudoun Valley, Virginia’s defending 4A champion, was dominant, scoring 85 points to Albemarle’s 226. Freedom, of South Riding, was third with 237. Bogucki was fifth, Jacob Hunter was 18th, Chase Dawson was 21st and Jacob Windle was 45th.

Spectators had to look farther back for tension in the women’s race. Holt was clear of Green and third-place Cactoctin senior Julien Webster early on, though she still heard their footsteps.

“I tried to just focus on myself,” she said. “If I pay attention to my form, it helps me block out thinking about other runners. Sometimes I’ll listen to people cheering, but then I’ll hear them cheering for someone else and then I get nervous that someone’s catching me.”

Ava Bir didn’t have that trouble finished 10th, one spot and eight seconds behind Ava Hassebrock from Tuscarora, Marshall’s chief rival.

“I heard people cheering for Ava, this week and last week,” Bir said. “She’s running really really well and it’s nice to know I am finishing close to her.”

Her teammate Jenna Robbins (23rd) went even further.

“I pretend everyone is cheering for me, I don’t care what name they’re yelling,” she said. “A lot of coaches will shout advice to their runners, and it’s good advice, so I take it, too. If they say move your arms, I move my arms, too.”

The Oatlands course reminds all of them of Panorama Farms, where their 5A regional meet is held, and where they’ll be competing to return to the state meet for the third consecutive year, and the third time in the program’s history. They were fifth in Virginia’s 5A last year. 

Along with Holt, Bir and Robbins, Marshall had scoring runners in Sophie Tedesco (27th) and Natalie Bardach (43rd).

“We’ve had so many hard workouts this week,” Robbins said. “When your goal is a race in November, things seem a long way off in August. Now that we’re into September and we’re racing and seeing how the team is improving, it’s easier to get excited.”

Freedom’s team is excited, after their boys improved to third place from 13th in 2015. And no member of the team quite as much as Niklas Becker, a freshman who ran his first 5k, finishing second in the underclassman junior varsity race in 17:46.

He was scheduled to debut at the distance a week prior in Winchester, but hot muggy weather prompted meet officials to shorten the race.

Becker has been running since he was 8, inspired by his older sister, Elena to join the Dulles South Youth running program, which fit well with this soccer schedule. He finished his soccer career last year, though.

“I got serious about running last year,” he said. “I like racing and I know that if I tried to do both, I wouldn’t be able to do my best with running.”

Now he’s in harrier heaven at Freedom, where he has a team ready to move ahead, and quickly.

“I like the hard workouts; there’s always someone to help you get faster,” he said. “Everyone is supportive and nice.”

As for what he’s learned from his older teammates, “patience.”

“You should never panic in a race,” he said. “There’s always time to make up for things.”

That fits what coach Karen Richardson sees for her Freedom team, which was seventh in Virginia’s 4A division last fall.

“This is week seven in what could be a 14-, 15-week season,” she said. “It was a very good finish for our program. We set some high goals for ourselves, put together a very deliberate training program with a few key races and this meet was one of them.”

What encourages her most is the team’s closeness and personal investment a system that prides itself on reliability, dedication and selflessness.

“We have a tight spread,” she said. “Our number two was our number four last week. Our number four this week was our number two last week. There’s not a competition within this team, it’s a competition with other teams.”

Nearing two miles at the Monroe Parker Invitational, runners emerged from the shade that protected them for most of the course at Burke Lake.

If they didn’t already feel the stifling humidity, they certainly felt the sun beating down on them, and the times for the 2.98 mile race reflected that. Those conditions combined to first move the varsity races earlier and on race day prompt the cancellation of four junior varsity races. The freshmen races went off before the varsity races. 

Lake Braddock won both the boys’ (five finishers in the top 40) and girls’ (five in the top 19) varsity races.

Though George Marshall junior Heather Holt improved on last year’s 17:44 to hit 17:27, the 16 girls who dipped under 19 minutes dropped to three. The boys likewise had 16 under 16 minutes during the rainy, cool 2015 race, down to eight this year. 

But, as Thomas Jefferson’s Saurav Velleleth noted, times mean ultimately mean little in the actual cross country races, and although he was slower than in last year’s race, he scored a close victory over Lake Braddock senior Conor Lyons, 15:29 to 15:30. Velleleth was third last year, and the top returner.

“I definitely wanted to win,” he said. “My plan for most races is to stay with the front pack and then see what I have in the last mile. Conor threw me off a little when he made his move coming out into the sun but I took a shot a little after the second mile.”

Compared to some of his longer training runs this summer, the heat didn’t demoralize Velleleth.

“I just kept telling myself ‘It’s not that bad,'” he said. “I had to focus on that last mile, and a lot of it was in the shade. There’s a single-file trail before you hit the last straight and I knew I had to get ahead before that.”

John Mackay from T.C. Williams took the race out, knowing he wouldn’t keep it, but wanting to work on his tenacity.

“I knew people would catch me, but I wanted to stay with them when they caught me,” he said. “I was proud of being able to take the lead at the beginning and still finish strong, that’s showing me how much the training is working. I was proud to be able to take the lead at the start, I just felt stronger.”

Mackay was fourth, edged by Tuscarora’s Derek Johnson in 15:40, and that’s a large improvement from 31st last year. He anticipated the heat all week.

“I just tried to drink as much water as i could beforehand,” he said. “I didn’t really feel bad during the race.”

Johnson, on the other hand, got an idea pretty quickly about how rough the conditions would be.

“I didn’t know exactly what to expect, how much it would impact the race, but after warming up and being just drenched in sweat, I knew it was going to factor in. I still didn’t want to adjust my expectations.”

Then, as the varsity boys lined up, Johnson saw one of the freshmen girls loaded into an ambulance.

“She had just run until she was totally done,” he said.

Zach Lindsey, from West Potomac, edged James Madison’s Zach Holden for seventh, an arrangement that worked out in his favor.

“I heard people cheering for Zach and I wasn’t sure if it was for me or him, so I just acted like it was all for me,” he said. “That made up for how hard it was to climb that hill (before the second mile mark) and come out of the shade into the sun.”

Holt repeated as the girls winner, starting fast from the gun and burying the rest of the field to win by almost a minute over Sarah Daniels from Lake Braddock.

“I just wanted to go out early and focus on myself, not the competition, ” Holt said. “I don’t really lift my knees that much, so I’m leaving a lot of momentum out there. I need to use my arms more.”

While she feels like her performance on the Burke Lake course has improved, she still has to work on downhill running.

“After a half mile, Heather was so far ahead of my and the chase pack was so pretty far back,” Daniels said.

Fairfax junior Chloe Tran made her cross country comeback after a year of injury. While she was gad to be back, she didn’t take it easy on herself, despite finishing third.

“I feel like I could have done better, those hills killed me every time I hit them,” she said. “This is a big change from track.”

The heat crept into her race, too, but she managed to keep her composure through the finish line.

“My breathing was getting a lot more labored, but I just kept going,” she said. “If I can make it through the season injury free, I’ll be pretty happy. And I think I’ll have a chance to run under 5:00 in the mile.”

The Robinson duo of sophomore Seneca Willen and Lia Hanus made the most of the race even though the heat cramped their style.

“It was okay until halfway, then it was just hot. That’s the best way to describe it,” Willen said. “I tried really hard in the last half mile and one of my teammates and I tried to pass a few girls but it just didn’t happen.”

Hanus didn’t plan to take the race too seriously because of the heat, but in the end, she managed a good race for fifth place.

“Hearing the temperature shocked me a little,” she said. “It was worse than I thought.”

Willen said the team was prepared, though, and recognized the danger.

“Our Facebooks are covered in ‘drink water,’ ‘drink water,’ ‘drink water…,'” she said.

James Madison coach Craig Chasse said his team seemed to be among the teams best acclimated to the heat.  The Warhawks finished second to Lake Braddock’s boys and girls.

“We practice at 3;30 every afternoon, so it’s hard to find time that’s much hotter,” he said. “We look at this as mental toughness training: nobody should be their fastest now anyway, so its a chance to see how strong we are.”

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Chasing the Spotlight

Despite the loss of two national cross country champions, the D.C.-area cross country runners won’t be overlooked this fall.

Not after Kate Murphy ran the third-fastest high school 1,500 when she qualified for the U.S. Olympic Trials. She made it to the semifinals a week before she finished 12th in the 3,000 meters at the world junior championships.

This follows a year when she won the Nike Cross Southeast meet and a state individual title. Coming back for her senior year at Lake Braddock, she headlines a local group of girls who have been getting a lot of attention for their exploits on courses near and far, including Patriot senior Rachel McArthur, who was an alternate to the world junior championships this summer in the 1,500 meters. Seven of 10 girls on the post-season All-RunWashington team return for the 2016 season.

The boys, on the other hand, are all coming out of the shadow cast by Drew Hunter and his 2016 classmates, with only Richard Montgomery senior Rohann Asfaw returning from last year’s All-RunWashington team.

This year’s cross country landscape inspired the most engaging discussion among our coaches panel that we’ve had in the past four years. They met after the three state meets to pick the 10 boys and 10 girls who represent the best of the D.C. metro area. They also picked the seven boys and seven girls from D.C., Maryland and Virginia. Virginia again dominates the All-RunWashington preseason team, with nine of 10 boys and eight of 10 girls.

The coaches selected the most promising teams heading into the season, though they will be no surprise to anyone who saw last November’s state championships.

Once again, Maryland and Virginia will hold their state meets over the same weekend — Nov. 11-12, with the Maryland and D.C. private schools racing that Saturday, a week after all D.C. schools meet for their state championship.

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Page Lester – National Cathedral School – Junior

Page Lester, the National Cathedral School triathlete who moonlights as a runner, won both the 800 and 1,600 at the ISL championship, after trailing now-graduated Taylor Knibb across the line at the Maryland-D.C. Private School cross country championships.

A shoulder injury kept her from swimming normally, so she spent four months just kicking in the pool.

“It wasn’t very fun, but my legs are stronger now,” she said.

Her endurance has been improving as she’s added distance to her weekly long runs.

“I used to do four, maybe five miles, now I’m up to 10 or 11,” she said. “I’ll run three afternoons a week, plus my long run,” on top of five or six swims and three or four bike rides weekly.

Highlights – Nike Cross Southeast: 45th, MD-DC Private School Championships: 2nd
1600 meters: 4:57.7; 3200 meters: 10:47.88

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Abigail Green – Walter Johnson – Junior

Abigail Green emerged from a swimming pool and shot to the front of Walter Johnson’s team as a freshman, helping the Wildcats to the last two Maryland 4A championships. Now a junior, she’s aiming to lead the team to its fourth straight title, while also targeting the indi
vidual crown, which Annapolis senior Maria Coffin won last year.

It’s a rivalry she’s embracing.

“Maria’s very consistent with her running, and I ran my best time when we ran even then pushed it at the end,” she said. “When I was a freshman, I’d just go out fast all the time, that’s all I really knew how to do,” she said. “I didn’t know any better, sometimes I pushed a little too hard. I can follow other people’s lead now, but I also know how to run my own race.”

She broke 11 minutes in the 3,200 meters, getting down to 10:37, which changed the way she looked at racing.

“I broke a huge barrier for me when I broke 11 so early on, and breaking it every time I ran the 32. It helped me feel like I was on a higher level after that,” she said. “To see a different number at the start of your results changed things more than I thought,” she said.

Highlights – Nike Cross Southeast: 31st; Maryland 4A championships: 2nd
1600m: 4:59.62; 3200m: 10:37.60

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Ahmed Hassan – Oakton – Junior

Ahmed Hassan had been cut from the basketball team his freshman year at Oakton when he decided to take his then-unapparent talents to the indoor track team, a week after the season started

“Coach cut me some slack and let me run,” he said. “A lot of the older guys helped me out. I shuffled my feet a lot when I started.”

He learned to fix that, and ran 4:32 for 1,600 meters his freshman year. But coming into his first cross country season as a sophomore, without the familiarity and base training to go along with the distance, left him ill-prepared “I was getting rocked in workouts,” he said. “It was a major adjustment to the mileage.”

It all paid off when his 1,600 meter time dropped to 4:17.56 to finish second in the outdoor state meet. He had started his track season with a 4:41 in January.

Highlights – Virginia 6A XC: 28th
1600m: 4:17.56 (2nd in Va. 6A); 3200m: 9:19.22

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Heather Holt – George Marshall – Junior

Emma Wolcott – Tuscarora – Junior

Despite their polite demeanors, Heather Holt and Emma Wolcott grabbed the spotlight in Virginia’s 5A division, winning the individual titles in 2014 and 2015, respectively, and setting up two more years of competitive races between the two. Now juniors, they’re also leading teams that could match up well at the state meet, after Wolcott’s Tuscarora team won and Holt’s George Marshall team took fifth.

Holt avenged her state meet loss to Wolcott and nearly made the Foot Locker final in the process, finishing six seconds back from the last qualifying spot. She’s in her third year of running, after playing soccer, and she’s picking up the nuances outside of the 5k races.

“I’ve gotten more experience racing, but now I observe people’s demeanors before races,” she said. “It’s helped me relax.”

She went on to win the indoor and outdoor state 1,600 meter titles, the latter in 4:54.28.

Wolcott, on the other hand, is more of a distance runner, hitting 10:39 for 3,200 meters midseason during her abbreviated spring, good enough to be the fourth fastest time among returning Virginia runners.

As a result, she’s a fan of more difficult courses that test her strength, where she can build a lead and tire the kickers out.

“I don’t have a great kick so I like to put as much distance between me and anyone behind me so they can’t surprise me,” she said.

She started running for fun in seventh grade, but when she reached high school, things started to come together for Wolcott.

“I like the competitive aspect, pushing yourself, seeing how good you are,” she said. “Once I got to race I just kept finishing close to the front.”

Holt highlights: Virginia 5A XC: 2nd, Footlocker South: 11th
800m: 2:11.30   1600m: 4:54.28 (1st VA 5A)  3200m: 10:42.13

Wolcott highlights: Virginia 5A XC: 1st, Footlocker South: 22nd
3200m: 10:39.63

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Saurav Velleleth – Thomas Jefferson – Senior

For Saurav Velleleth and his Thomas Jefferson teammates, running is a fun reprieve from their science and technology magnet school’s grueling curriculum.

“School takes up so much of your life, there’s so much homework,” he said. “For a lot of us, we use running as a way to take our minds off of academics.”

He has an added complication of commuting from his home in Loudoun County, about 45 minutes each way, where he got his start running with the Nova Athletic Club, directed by the Hunters. But they can’t turn their focus on and off, and that’s why the Colonials notched a runner-up finish in Virginia’s 5A division last fall, with Velleleth leading the way in third place.

“We take our academic dedication and apply it to the sport,” he said. “We’re pretty motivated on our own.” He followed that up with a second place finish in the 3,200 meters in the spring, after winning the indoor 3,200.

But what would his life be without running? “I’d be playing basketball, getting home at 5 instead of 8. Living like normal kids. I don’t want that.”

Highlights – Virginia 5A: 3rd

1600m – 4:16.25 3200m- 9:22.10 (2nd 5A)

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Patrick Lynch – George Marshall – Senior

George Marshall senior Patrick Lynch put everything together during his junior year, culminating in a ninth place finish in the Virginia 5A meet. He was enthusiastic about the sport from the start, though. Without a fall sport as a freshman, he showed up to the first day of tryouts and loved it.

“I liked that, when with other sports you had to hold back, with running, you can just put it all out there,” he said.

But there was a sport way to run, and he came around to it in 2015.

“I finally figured out how to push and when to push,” he said. That savvy helped him hit 4:25.93 for 1,600 meters this spring.

Highlights: Virginia 5A XC: 10th
1600m: 4:25.93 3200m: 9:38.07

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Sean Grimm – James Madison – Senior

Sean Grimm led the way for James Madison’s surprising runner-up finish in the 6A race last fall with his 19th place finish. The Warhawks look to challenge Lake Braddock this fall, with four of their top five returning.

Grimm’s journey to a pair of spikes started when he gave up baseball after eighth grade.

“I got bored sitting around when I was supposed to be playing a sport,” he said, explaining why he would probably be swimming or cycling if he didn’t run.

He’s an endurance nut.

As he’s matured, he’s refined his approach to competition.

“There’s a tactical part of the races,” he said. “I’m learning to use different strategies and it feels like a whole new sport when you do that.” He showed mastery of nuance in finishing eighth in the outdoor 3,200 meters at the Virginia 6A meet. And running has benefitted him outside of his athletic life. “I’m not normally academically motivated, but after I run I feel like I have a lot more focus,” he said. “It’s good for me all around.”

Highlights: Virginia XC 6A: 19th
1600m: 4:26.82   3200m: 9:33.70

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Conor Lyons – Lake Braddock – Senior

A transplant from Indiana, Lyons played a big, or tall, part in the Bruins repeating as team champions. He misses the slower pace of the Midwest, but that didn’t stop him from finishing eighth in the Virginia 6A race to help Lake Braddock defend its title.

“We have a lot more speed-based stuff here. I never ran a 200 before I came here,” he said. “I don’t like intervals and I know they make me better.” They helped gain the fitness that carried him to the 3,200 championship this spring in a PR of 9:16.80.

If he wasn’t a runner?

“I’d probably be watching videos on YouTube.”

Highlights: Virginia 6A XC: 8th    Nike Cross Southeast: 49th
1600m: 4:16.97   3200m: 9:16.80 (VA 6A: 1st)

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Casey Kendall – Oakton – Senior

The Virginia 6A cross country championship race was run on guts and teamwork for Oakton’s Casey Kendall.

“Cross country was kind of disappointing,” she said. “I had a few quick races but had some rough ones toward the middle and the end.”

Injuries and low iron couldn’t keep her down all the time, though. She and then-senior Jill Bracaglia finished together, with Kendall given the edge for third place in the results.

“If she wasn’t in the race, I don’t think I could have done that,” she said. “That’s just teamwork there. That was the hardest race of my life.”

Bracaglia is gone, as are Kendall’s earlier role models who graduated, including her sister Kara, leaving her the undisputed leader.

“I like being captain. I’m really extroverted so it works out well,” she said. “I like checking up on everyone in practice, making sure they’re in line and doing what they’re supposed to, but then on race day keeping their nerves down. “I tell them, ‘It’s just a race, do what you have to do. Do what we’ve trained for.'”

Highlights: Virginia 6A XC: 3rd
1600: 4:58.88 (VA 6A: 5th)    3200m: 10:41.56

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Danielle Bartholomew – Osbourn Park – Senior

Danielle Bartholomew broke out at the Oatlands Invitational, finishing third and introducing Northern Virginia to the Osbourn Park junior who had spent two years toiling with injuries.

“I was a little freaked out by all of it,” she said of the new standard for her performances.

“I ran for fun before, but then once I started running fast, I felt like I had to keep getting better,” she said. “I was worried about disappointing people. Now there were expectations.”

She’s managed those expectations, while also justifying people’s confidence. She finished seventh in the Virginia 6A cross country meet, then second in the outdoor 3,200 meters.

That success has bought her a little benefit of the doubt from her older sister, with whom Danielle creates costumes for cosplay conventions and now understands Danielle’s commitment.

“We usually make the costumes without patterns, so it’s a creative outlet,” she said. “It’s a good balance from all the running.”

Highlights: Virginia 6A XC: 7th
1600m: 5:24.66   3200m: 10:59.29 (VA 6A: 1st)

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Rohann Asfaw – Richard Montgomery – Junior

Rohann Asfaw went from a gawky teenager hoping to lose some weight to a near-national qualifier in just a few years. He’s been doing that on relatively-low mileage, about 35 miles week, but with a lot of intensity. He was one place away from making the Nike Cross National meet last fall.

“I’ll start boosting my mileage to get ready for college running, but for now I’ve done alright with short, faster stuff.”

He’s done more than alright. Asfaw dominated Montgomery County and nearly won the state 4A cross country title. He later avenged his loss to Dulaney’s Eric Walz in winning both the 1,600 and 3,200 at the outdoor state meet, and he’s the favorite to ascend to the title this year. He ran 9:11 at the New Balance indoor national meet and he was one place away from qualifying for Nike Cross Nationals.

“It was exciting to finish at the top of a lot of races, but I really want to make to Nike (Cross Nationals),” he said.  

Highlights: Maryland 4A: 2nd Nike Cross Southeast: 6th
1600m: 4:19.10  2 mile: 9:11.08

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Rachel McArthur – Patriot – Senior

The last two years of Rachel McArthur’s cross country career have taken her all over the emotional spectrum. An incredible streak toward the end of her sophomore year carried her to state and Nike Southeast titles. She and Kate Murphy ran the national race side by side, not pushing the pace because, as 10th graders, they were looking at two more chances.

“I just blew through everything and didn’t have a care in the world,” she said.

But as a junior, a quad tear bedeviled her for weeks, forcing the Pioneers to gamble on trying to make the state meet without her and allowing McArthur another week to recover. It didn’t pay off, but she was able to make it back for the Nike Cross Southeast meet.

“I was feeling fine and then in the last stretch I collapsed,” she said. “I crawled around then got up, walked across the finish line and passed out.

“Just a little.”

She made it, but the national meet was a long shot that again didn’t pay off.

“It was really tough to be sitting back and watching people run so well and not be able to be in those races,” she said. To add more injury to that, she later broke her sacrum when a friend jumped on her back. “I felt the crack, and knew I was going to be out,” she said. “I just didn’t know how much pool running I’d end up doing. It was awful. It was just really upsetting.”

That said, she came back in time, and in shape, for the indoor state meet, where she ran on the winning 4×800 team, then carried that success into the outdoor season, finishing second in the Penn Relays mile and winning the 800 state title, and edging Murphy en route to running 2:06.55.

Throughout, though, she was still not mentally present in a lot of races.

“I didn’t feel like I was racing, sometimes,” she said. “If I’m not mentally there, it feels like the race didn’t happen.”

Then she avoided a fall at the Brooks PR Invitational mile to finish third in 4:45.72 before also finishing third in the US junior championships in the 1,500 meters.

Even with that happy ending to the season, she knows the next season will be hard, with her friend and rival Murphy running so well, and there are pieces left to put together, especially in her mental approach to racing.

“I don’t really have faith in what I can do,” she said. “I know I can push myself, but after the last year, I need to prove to myself that I can run the way I remember.”

Highlights: Nike Cross Southeast: 5th
800m: 2:06.55 (1st VA 6A) 1600m: 4:48.81  3200m: 10:35.19

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Brandon McGorty – Chantilly – Senior

Of all of the high school runners in the United States, only one can claim to having beaten Hunter in the last year. That’s Chantilly senior Brandon McGorty, who edged him in a mid-season 800 meter race. That was much more McGorty’s wheelhouse than more than three miles of cross country racing. But toward the end of last fall, he started to value the sport for its opportunity.

“I basically use cross country to get in shape for track,” he said. “It’s not my strong suit.”

The night before last year’s 6A state championship, his father Kevin, a two-time Olympic Trials decathlon qualifier, convinced him to give the grassy race a chance on its own merits. He was in the championship, why not try.

“I was about ready to get started with indoors, but he reminded me that this race was an opportunity and I came in with a clear head,” he said. “I used to hang onto the pack and then give it what I had at the end, but I kept fading. I think I’m going to start hanging back and kicking more.”

Highlights: Virginia 6A XC: 6th
800m: 1:48:58  (VA 6A: 1st, USATF Jr, 5th)  1600m: 4:13.41 (VA 6A 1st) 1 mile 4:08.58

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Derek Johnson – Tuscarora – Junior

Derek Johnson doesn’t go in for that. He sat and kicked early on in his career at Tuscarora, but that was just as much due to his inexperience. He signed up for the team with little experience. And it was a little rough.

“For the first couple of weeks, I was sleeping all the time. It was so hard,” he said. He stuck with it, though, thanks to the influence of his teammates and his coach, Troy Harry. “He’s the best coach I’ve had in any sport,” he said.

He embraces cross country for the chance it gives him to work on his strength and use a course’s difficulty to his advantage.

“It’s tough to compare times in cross country,” he said. “You see the times people run — someone’s in the low 16s and you wonder if it’s the kind or the course. If we just wanted fast times, we’d run 5ks on the track. I love Oatlands, with its hills. It’s a real cross country course.”

Highlights: Virginia 5A XC: 6th
1600m: 4:31.97    3200m: 9:39.77

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Colton Bogucki – Loudoun Valley – Junior

Peter Morris – Loudoun Valley – Junior

Loudoun Valley likely has a better team now than when the country’s best runner wore its uniform. Despite Drew Hunter’s graduation following an undefeated cross country season, most of the remaining Vikings are underclassmen. Without Drew, the Vikings swept the top seven spots in the conference 3,200 meters, with five of them underclassmen and all of them under 10:10. Hunter was the only top-five scorer, at the Virginia 4A state meet, older than a sophomore last fall. Colton Bogucki, Peter Morris, Jacob Hunter and Chase Dawson are setting up a foundation for another two years, at least, of dominance.

Bogucki and Morris, both juniors, ran nearly identical times this spring and finished fifth and sixth at the cross country state meet, then ran very similar times in the spring, with Morris hitting 4:20.64 and 9:23.21 for 1,600 and 3,200, respectively, and 4:21.20, 9:23.65 for Bogucki.

Bogucki discovered his affinity for running at summer camp, where, at age 10, he finished a five mile run feeling much better than expected.

“For a 10-year-old, I did pretty well,” he said. “I don’t know why I tried it in the first place.”

Following his brother to the sport, he joined Vikings coaches Joan and Marc Hunter’s year-round Nova Athletic Club, which has spawned the careers of many of the top runners from Loudoun County recently, including TJ’s Velleleth. Nova is basically a sophisticated farm team for the Vikings’ program, including sponsoring indoor track at Loudoun Valley — a first for a Loudoun County school.

Over the past two years, Bogucki has added mental strength to his physical growth.

“I learned how to push myself mentally,” he said. “That confidence gives you a great advantage because you know you can go a little deeper.”

Morris also followed a sibling into the sport: his twin sister, Natalie. Like Grimm, he left baseball behind.

“She wanted to do it, so I went along,” he said. “I hadn’t run competitively before.”

“It was a sport we could do together,” Natalie said.

Peter gets a lot of his confidence from looking back at the longer runs he has logged.

“Getting to longer runs helped me build a lot of strength,” he said.

The team’s success isn’t a surprise to Morris and Bogucki.

“We have some of the best coaches around,” Bogucki said.

Morris looked outward.

“We’re a dedicated team, and when we do well, people notice,” he said. “They want to be part of a great team.”

Bogucki Highlights: Virginia 4A XC: 5th
1600m: 4:21.20 (VA 4A: 3rd) 3200m: 9:23.65

Morris Highlights: Virginia 4A XC: 6th
1600m: 4:20.64  3200m: 9:23.21 (VA 4A: 3rd)

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Sarah Daniels – Junior – Lake Braddock

Kate Murphy – Senior – Lake Braddock

Emily Schiesl – Senior – Lake Braddock

Sarah Daniels has a similar rationale to Morris’ as to why Lake Braddock’s girls team has grown.

“We’re the most successful team in the school,” she said. “People want to be a part of that.”

That’s the way coach Mike Mangan likes it. He tells runners to bring their friends out for the team, even if they aren’t fast. Then again, many end up becoming fast.

Lake Braddock has three girls on the All-RunWashington team and one on the Virginia team this fall. The Bruins return all of their scorers and all but one of their top seven, and figure to be one of the best teams in the country.

Kate Murphy has been a part of that, but she’s just one scorer. That said, she will be probably be first in most races.

She has seen a lot in her three years of running. Portland twice, Hayward Field, Bydgoszcz, Poland. There’s still more, though.

“Tokyo 2020,” she says with assurance, looking forward to lining up to race the 1,500 meters.

And she didn’t see the postseason of her first indoor track campaign, after Mangan didn’t see the kind of preparation and effort in practice he thought she was capable of. It’s not exactly Michael Jordan being cut from the basketball team, but it got her attention.

The race that stamped Murphy’s ticket to this year’s Olympic Trials showed a lot of promise for where she can take her running career. The 62-second last lap, for example, that carried her to 4:07.21 and the third-fastest time in high school history.

“When you get somewhere in a race you’ve never been before, it’s a little scary to push, because you might blow up,” she said.

She didn’t blow up when she took over for the rabbit ahead of schedule, and the experience on the national and international stages will only make her more dangerous on the cross country course.

While she considers herself a track runner primarily, Murphy appreciates the strength building that is the routine in the cross country season.

“They complement each other: track makes you faster, cross makes you tougher and builds your form,” she said. “No matter what season, I just have to put in the work.”

She was formerly a field hockey player and if she wasn’t running, she says she’d be “ballin,'” but cross country and track, in retrospect, seemed pre-ordained.

“I think running found me,” she said. “I’ve always been athletic, but this is a sport where you can take control and be in touch with what your body can do.”

As her ambitions for the track grow, she uses the cold numbers as a grounding mechanism.

“You need to be confident but remember that there’s always someone better than you,” she said.

Though she is near the pinnacle of high school running, Murphy doesn’t draw her inspiration from the professionals. She gets fired up among her peers.

“I look up to my teammates when I see how much pain they push through,” she said. “Every day you see someone do something they couldn’t do before.”

Daniels and Emily Schiesl were 11th and 10th, respectively, at the 6A state meet, and they’re back, with hopes of finishing higher and driving the Bruins’ score lower.

As much as they want to win, the team has built a positive atmosphere, which is tough when only seven runners get to lineup at championship races.

Schiesl saw it during her first days on the team. “I was excited,” she said. “I thought it would be more cutthroat but everyone was supportive of each other. It’s more of a family than I expected.”

Daniels pointed to the team’s tradition of writing letters to the other members of the postseason team as something special to her.

“It’s motivating to know how many people support you,” she said. “You don’t forget that on race day when things hurt and you’re looking for a reason to go on.

Daniels Highlights: Virginia 6A XC: 10th, Nike Cross Southeast: 29th
1600m: 5:15.03 3200m: 11:04.65

Murphy Highlights: Virginia 6A XC: 1st, Nike Cross Southeast: 1st
800m: 2:06.70 (VA 6A: 2nd) 1500m: 4:07.21 (reached Olympic Trials semifinals) 3000m: 9:17.01 (USATF Jr: 1st)

Schiesl Highlights: Virginia 6A XC: 11th, Nike Cross Southeast: 23rd
1600m: 5:14.46   3200m: 11:01.92

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This article originally appeared in the Fall 2016 issue of RunWashington.

• Loudoun Valley graduate Drew Hunter signed a 10-year contract to run professionally for adidas. He will make his professional debut at the Sir Walter Miler in Raleigh, N.C. Aug. 5.

• Lake Braddock’s Kate Murphy and Northwest alumnus Diego Zarate will race in the World Junior Track and Field Championships in Bydgoszcz, Poland. Zarate, who attends Virginia Tech, will begin racing July 19 in the heads for the 1,500 meters. The finals will be run July 21. Murphy’s 3,000 meter final is July 20.

• Drew Glick and Page Lester were named Gatorade Players of the Year for track and field in D.C. Glick, who graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School, won the 1,600 meters and 3,200 meters and anchored the winning 4×800 meter relay at the D.C. state championships. Lester capped off her sophomore year at the National Cathedral School by winning the 800 meters and 1600 meters at the Independent School League championships.

As is their custom, D.C. area runners won a slew of championships at their respective state meets, though a cancellation of the Virginia 3A/4A meet with several races remaining scuttled the 800 meters.

DC

800 meters
Zakyrah Haynie – Wilson: 2:23.50
Tristan Colaizzi – Georgetown Day School: 1:58.22

1600 meters
Katherine Treanor – Georgetown Day School: 5:23.17
Drew Glick – Wilson: 4:25.50 – breaking Aidan Pillard’s 4:30.33 state record from 2014. Gonzaga’s Harry Monroe was also under the record, running 4:28.40

3200 meters
Katherine Treanor – Georgetown Day School: 12:05.24
Drew Glick – Wilson: 10:04.29

4×800 meters
Girls – Wilson 10:03.39: Zakyrah Haynie , Meredith Ellison, Sofia Laine, Anna Cestari
Boys – Wilson 8:18.25: Aaron Coates, Ulyses Chalus, Patrick Mulderig, Drew Glick

Maryland

3A

800 meters
Gary Ross, Oxon Hill  1:56.36

4×800 meters
Oxon Hill 7:56.30: Adel Akalu, Aaron Robinson, Anthony Wimbush, Gary Ross

4A

800 meters
Kyra Badrian – Paint Branch: 2:17.06
Thierry Siewe – Montgomery Blair: 1:55.22

1600 meters
Rohann Asfaw – Rich. Montgomery: 4:20.95

3200 meters
Rohann Asfaw: Rich. Montgomery: 9:24.05

4×800 meters
Girls Bethesda-Chevy Chase – 9:32.28: Sarah Haas, Analise Schmidt, Zoe Nuechterlein, Lily O’Dowd
Boys Montgomery Blair – 7:58.58: Ben Geertseema, Alexander Mangiafico, Dominic Massimino, Thiery Yanga

 

Virginia

4A

3200
Weini Kelati – Heritage: 10:09.70
Drew Hunter – Loudoun Valley: 9:17.91

5A
1600 meters
Heather Holt – George Marshall: 4:54.28

6A
800 meters
Rachel McArthur, Patriot 2:06.55
Brandon McGorty, Chantilly 1:51.86

1600 meters
Reagan Bustamante West Springfield 4:51.97
Brandon McGorty, Chantilly  4:16.54

3200 meters
Conor Lyons Lake Braddock 9:16.80
Sara Freix  Westfield 10:51.63

4×800 meters
Boys: Lake Braddock – 7:51.35 Andrew Delvecchio, Cavanaugh McGaw, Colin Schaefer, Ben Fogg

 

With summer finally here, many D.C.-area high schoolers are already looking ahead to the upcoming cross country season. Namely, ways to maintain their fitness levels during the off-season or to log additional training time to start the season off strong.

We spoke with several new and long-running camps — all of them different in their own unique ways — that offer athletes a chance to break the monotony of solo training runs and learn from elite coaches and staff while having fun away from home. From the camp that loves a killer game of ultimate Frisbee as much as it loves a good fartlek, to the camp that touts its urban backdrop, there’s something for everyone this summer.

 

The Everyman Camp

American Running Camp’s history dates back more than two decades to the University of Oregon, over 3,000 miles away from the camp’s home in Portsmouth, R.I. Legendary Ducks coach Bill Dellinger — who trained stars like Steve Prefontaine and Alberto Salazar — started the camp based on his successful “Oregon System” of distance running.

“Lectures, workouts and runs are all based on these principles — moderation, progression, adaptability, variation and callousing — and teaching campers these principles,” said Kerri Gallagher, assistant camp director, adding that co-camp directors Matt Centrowitz and Pat Tyson both ran for Oregon under the tutelage of Dellinger in the 1970s.

The staff at American Running Camp, which will take place Aug. 1-6 on the campus of Portsmouth Abbey School, is a diverse mix of Olympians, high school and college coaches, and elite post-collegiate athletes.

“We have a lot of different perspectives [from coaches and staff] having different backgrounds,” explained Gallagher, who represented Team USA at the 2015 World Championships in Beijing. “We can relate to a lot of different kids, whether trying out for cross country for the first time or the runner going into senior year and top in the state and looking to have a big season coming up. I think we’re very versatile in that way.”

Aside from its incredibly experienced staff, what sets American Running Camp apart is the fact it is open to athletes of all ages and abilities from middle and high school students to adults. Campers are assigned to running groups based on their current ability and mileage background, but have the flexibility to move groups as needed. The typical day is structured around a morning run followed by a meal and strength or stretching sessions such as yoga, core or hurdles. After lunch and some free time, athletes have the option to head out for a second run depending on their ability.

“We’re very aware that every runner is at a different place at that point during the summer,” Gallagher said.

Each day ends with a fun evening activity. At the close of camp, runners participate in a casual, non-competitive race as a way to gauge their fitness level and abilities heading into the official cross country season.

Additional perks of American Running Camp include on-site housing in Portsmouth Abbey School’s dormitories and a fully staffed dining hall that is very accommodating of dietary needs, Gallagher said.

 

The Urban Camp

This July, Pacers Running’s DCXC Distance Project will hold its first summer cross country camp, DCXC Camp, on the campus of Georgetown University. Athletes will get a taste of being a Washingtonian runner over the four days (July 23-27), including running through Rock Creek Park, Glover-Archbold Park and along the C&O Towpatch, participating in the Crystal City Twilighter 5K and exploring the National Mall and Smithsonian museums.

“This is the only camp that I know of that highlights it as an urban camp experience. It’s a unique feature,” said Landon Peacock, assistant manager at Pacers 14th Street and the camp’s director.

The day-to-day structure of DCXC Camp will be modeled after the 42-year-old Wisconsin Cross Country Camp of Champions, where Peacock, a two-time all American from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, worked for five years. The camp will feature clinics on strength and conditioning, injury prevention, form and gait analysis, and running workouts. Most notably, campers will have one-on-one contact with runners who have competed at the collegiate, professional and Olympic levels.

“What makes camps [like Wisconsin] good is the counselors and how much they’re willing to engage with the kids,” Peacock said, adding that Julie Culley, a 2012 Olympian and Arlington resident, is booked as a guest speaker. “[DCXC Camp] will be a good combo of fun activities and something they’re going to learn and take from the camp to use throughout their running careers.”

In addition, campers will stay in Georgetown University’s Southwest Quad dorms and have access to the facilities at Yates Field House, which includes a 200-meter indoor track, eight-lane pool, weight room, tennis courts and more.

 

The “Un-Camp”

Nestled in the scenic Blue Ridge Mountains of Madison, Va., Camp Varsity Running Camp has been churning out state champions, All-Americans and record holders for nearly 35 years. Although it’s almost 100 miles from Washington, the camp has extremely local roots and attracts many area runners. Its founder — then George Mason University coach John Cook — started the camp in the early 1980s and operated it for several years with George Watts, an All-American out of the University of Tennessee and native of Alexandria, Va. Today it’s run by Bob Digby, head track and field coach at Lake Braddock High School.

During Camp Varsity Running Camp, which this year will run from Aug. 14 to 20, athletes are up early for the first run of the day, followed by breakfast, a morning recreational activity like volleyball or ultimate Frisbee and then free time at the waterfront and on-site country store. After lunch, campers have an opportunity to squeeze in a nap before an afternoon run, followed by more free time, dinner and a fun evening activity such as capture the flag. At the end of the week there is a camp-wide relay where the victors are awarded an ice cream party.

Despite Camp Varsity Running Camp’s illustrious reputation and staff, noticeably missing from its schedule are the numerous lectures and speakers found at other running camps.

“Our camp is extremely different because the focus doesn’t necessarily rely around intense training. We spend a considerable amount of time on non-running things,” explained Bob Digby, director of Camp Varsity Running Camp. “I’m a believer that kids are not in great shape in August and if you take those kids and pound them for a week, you’re going to send them back to their coaches broken.”

While it may seem like an unproductive concept, Camp Varsity Running Camp is a disruptor by design — borrowing some of the “fun, goofy activities” from the six-week recreational camp, simply named Camp Varsity, that precedes it. And Digby, who has worked at the running camp since 1983 before taking it over 12 years later, has no plans to change its philosophy of fun.

“Our camp focuses on the recreational, fun part of it. It affords kids the opportunity to be kids, [especially for] juniors and seniors who are stressed out about college,” he said, adding that many of Lake Braddock’s coaches opt also to coach at the summer running camp, giving their teams a chance to see them in a “non-coaching role,” goofing around and dressing up silly for dinner. “That’s such an important thing for kids to have and they just don’t get at that age. It’s nice to be able to provide that.”

Our Lady of Good Counsel was 1,000 meters from glory. This was all that separated the Falcons from beating rival Bishop O’Connell for the first time in seven years to win the 2014 Washington Catholic Athletic Conference cross country crown.

But then the squad’s best runner, 16-year-old junior Megan Crilly, started to fade, developing a glassy look in her eyes that had become eerily prevalent throughout her fall workouts. Crilly crashed and ended up collapsing across the finish line. She finished 16th — almost two minutes slower than her individual winning time the year before — and Our Lady of Good Counsel wound up second.

What was far more troubling, though, was that Crilly, after the race, needed nearly two hours to become coherent enough to know where she was.

Everything was a symptom of thyroid cancer, which was diagnosed a month later, attacking her energy and metabolism the entire fall, crippling her running and putting her life at risk. But rather than feeling sorry for herself, Crilly was determined to make amends for her frustrating conference championship meltdown.

“I felt like I had let my team down because I should have done a lot better than I did,” she said. “That was a source of motivation, to be able to back in shape for my team and come back stronger for my senior year.”

Crilly did just that and more.

Now a senior, she was not only able to defeat the cancer, but returned to the Good Counsel cross country team running times better than before her run-in with the disease.

Running was more than a distraction. It provided fuel throughout her cancer treatment and recovery to return to cross country.

“She really did an amazing job of getting through this with grace and composure and maturity beyond her years,” her mother, Kim Crilly, said. “She inspires me every day.”

Crilly isn’t your typical high schooler. She’s a gritty, determined competitor.

Her workouts fall somewhere between impeccable and perfect, according to Tom Arnold, her coach.

“She just didn’t make mistakes,” even as a freshman running on a competitive varsity team, he said. “She just had a maturity you don’t see in many athletes.”

Every summer, she showed up religiously every weekday in the summer for 10 weeks, at 6 a.m., to train and lay a base for the upcoming fall season. That added up to a WCAC cross country individual title her sophomore season.

But in her junior year she started to struggle. She didn’t seem to have the control and dominance she usually had, and it got worse throughout the race season. Megan couldn’t finish some of the team’s harder workouts, the interval and tempo runs, and her times in races were slipping back to freshman-year levels.

“I felt very tired and very sick,” Crilly said, adding that she had trouble breathing.

Doctors first suspected a much more common ailment: anemia. But anemia doesn’t come with a lump on the throat, and a biopsy revealed the truth.

Thyroid cancer is comparably manageable, which was fortunate.

“If you’re going to have cancer, it’s one of those ones one you want to have,” Crilly said.

But it had also spread to her lymph nodes, which had to be treated with radiation that spring. The radiation forced Crilly to stop her medication for hypothyroidism, further complicating her recovery and running.

But in the end, Crilly attacked her cancer with a just-do-it attitude almost as if it were shin splints or plantar fasciitis.

Kim Crilly tries to raises her children with an understanding that everyone is going through rough times and life is sometimes hard. But don’t let that slow you down or hold you back.

Megan Crilly scheduled her surgery on New Year’s Eve so she wouldn’t miss school. Radiation treatments came on long weekends for the same reason.

“Most kids would have milked that for all they could get,” Arnold said. “‘Oh, I’ll get this time off from school and all this attention.’

But she didn’t want anyone to know. She wanted to get through it as best she could on her own.” Just two days after her surgery,

Crilly wanted to go on a 20-minute walk that left her exhausted the rest of the day.

“Even when she wasn’t feeling well, she went to practice and just did what she had to do,” Kim Crilly said.

She started running again in late January, wanting to get back to her team and help them. “Running was one thing that kept me mentally and physically strong,” Megan Crilly said. “It was a great outlet. …. I almost needed running as a way to get through it.”

Getting back to her old self took a few months, but she returned in time for spring track season and ran personal bests in the 400 and 800 meters.

That success late in the season gave her confidence headed into summer workouts that aided her senior cross country season last fall.

She ran four sub-20-minute 5Ks; before her illness she hadn’t broken 20 minutes. She finished second overall at the WCAC meet where she collapsed the year before, although her team came up short of the team title.

Crilly finished sixth in the Maryland and D.C. Private School Championship after running 11th her sophomore season.

“It was the first season where I felt I was up to my full potential,” Crilly said. “It was nice for once to see all my hard work pay off.”

Fighting cancer gave the high schooler perspective about adversity and life that proves valuable to handling tough times in racing.

“It’s great to set goals. However, you might not reach those goals every single race, and that’s OK,” Crilly said. “As long as you keep working as hard as possible and you believe in yourself, your training and yourself, you’ll eventually get there.”

Tests early in 2016 revealed no signs of cancer remaining. She wants to continue running at a local college in Maryland and is thinking about studying engineering.

“After my junior year, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to run in college because I was kind of discouraged,” Crilly said. “But after going through this experience, I’ve come out stronger, and I’ve learned to believe in myself a little bit more. I want to pursue running in college.”

This article originally appeared in the Spring 2016 issue of RunWashington.

Despite unseasonably warm temperatures in the D.C. area last week, the indoor track season wasn’t quite over, which was good for plenty of local high school athletes and the Georgetown women’s distance medley relay team.

NCAA Indoor Championships

In Albuquerque, Georgetown’s team of Emma Keenan, Heather Martin, Andrea Keklak and Katrina Coogan won the NCAA indoor championships March 11, running 10:57.21, ahead of the University of Washington’s 10:58.52. The next afternoon, Coogan finished third in the 3,000 meters, running 9:07.74 to Molly Siedel‘s (Notre Dame) 8:57.86, and Keklak  finished fourth in the mile in 4:38.44, behind Oklahoma State runner Kaela Edwards‘ 4:35.62.

Loundoun County alumnus Thomas Curtain, running for Virginia Tech, finished second in the 5,000 meters, running 13:50.70 to trail Oregon’s Edward Cheserek‘s 13:47.89. The next day, Cheserek held a 8:00.40 – 8:01:55 lead over Stanford’s Sean McGorty, a Chantilly alumnus, in the 3,000 meters. Ahmed Bile, an Annandale alumnus who runs for Georgetown, was 14th in 8:24.15.

New Balance Nationals Indoor

Heritage’s Weini Kelati kicked off the top local performances at the New Balance Nationals Indoor meet by breaking the less-than-one-year-old high school indoor 5,000 meter record, running 16:08.83. That broke Anna Rohrer‘s mark of 16:10.79. She also won the two mile in 10:02.71.

T.C Williams’ Noah Lyles broke Xavier Carter‘s 12-year-old high school indoor 200 meter record, running 20.63 to shave off .06 seconds.

Lyles team up with his brother Josephus, Tre’kel Locket and Kai Cole to win the 4×200 relay, running 1:26.21. Joesphus Lyles also won the 60 meters in 6.65 seconds.

In the boys’s distance medley relay, Loudoun Valley’s team “The Jungle,” won in 10:03.42 over River Dell, of New Jersey. Loudoun Valley’s team consisted of Will Smaugh, Colton Bogucki, Drew Hunter and Nathaniel Thompson.

Chantilly’s XBC club broke the national sprint medley relay record, running 3:24.02 to outdistance Motor City Track Club from Michigan (3:25.96) and cut .14 seconds from Dayton, Ohio’s Dunbar team, which had broken the record the year before. Chantilly’s runners were Michael Scopellite, Justin Loh, Titus Jeffries and Brandon McGorty.

Lake Braddock’s girls distance medley relay team — Shannon Browing, Skyla Davidson, Samantha Schwers and Kate Murphy — finished second in 11:39.10. Murphy also finished second in the mile, running 4:39.47.

U.S. Indoor Championships

Two D.C.-based Georgetown alumnae competed in the U.S Indoor Championships March 11-12 in Portland, Ore. Rachel Schneider finished eighth in the 1,500 meters, running 4:19.48. Chelsea Cox ran 2:04.29 in the 800 meters preliminary heat. Georgetown alumna Emily Infeld finished 10th in the 3,000 meters in 9:10.22.

Eritrea native Weini Kelati came out of nowhere to take high school running by storm

She blends in with her classmates at Heritage High School, constantly joking around and texting with her friends and cross country teammates. But Weini Kelati doesn’t share the same stories with her classmates about growing up in Leesburg, having shown up a year and a half ago from a country only her most geographically-astute classmates knew about — Eritrea.

Now a junior academically, the 19-year-old has been making headlines all school year as she nabs win after win, including the 2015 Foot Locker Cross Country Championships in December and a national high school record 16:08.33 for the 5000 meters at the New Balance Nationals Indoor in New York, two seconds faster than the existing record set my Anna Rohrer last year in 16:10.79. But her journey to become a champion — which began half a world away on the east coast of Africa — was not easy.

Coming to America

Eritrea borders Ethiopia and Sudan on the Horn of Africa. Therace she ever ran, she recalled, was in her sixth grade physical education class, and she hated it. But soon enough, her natural talent took over. At age 12, she already was a top-ranked runner in Eritrea, racing well outside of her age group and mixing it up with professionals in their 20s.

She competed at international meets across Europe as a teenager, but she was mostly unknown in the United States. In July 2014, at 17 years, Kelati ran 9:12.32 to finish eighth in the 3,000 meters at the at the IAAF World Junior Championships in Eugene, Ore.

Then, she didn’t go home. She applied for asylum and moved to Leesburg to live with her third cousin and now guardian, Amlesom Teklai, also an Eritrean immigrant and former competitive runner for West Potomac (Alexandria) in the late 1990s. Teklai, who first approached Heritage cross country coach Doug Gilbert, didn’t know he had a distant relative in Kelati until another family member in Texas asked him to take her in.

“[Amlesom] told me he just enrolled his cousin [at Heritage] and she loves to run. He mentioned she had just gotten back from the world championships,” Gilbert said. “It was at that point I Googled her name and very quickly found out who she was. It’s been a pretty large whirlwind since then.”

Kelati’s Eritrean Roots

Kelati doesn’t volunteer much about leaving Eritrea, spinning any question into a chance to talk about how excited she is to be in the United States, but it’s easy enough to find any number of reasons she’d be motivated to leave behind all she knew, her family, her friends.

Human Rights Watch calls the country’s record “dismal,” and the numbers — the United Nations estimates 5,000 émigrés flee the country every month — back that up.

Eritreans now make up the third-largest migrant group — behind Syrians and Afghans — trying to reach Europe. It’s a dangerous journey that requires crossing the borders into Ethiopia and Sudan, then on to Libya and across the Sahara. Finally, they must make the treacherous trip across the Mediterranean.

Many are leaving the country because of its forced military conscription. Eritreans are required by law to serve in the country’s military for 18 months when they reach 18 years of age, yet many remaining conscripted for 10 years or more while earning incredibly low pay that places an undue financial burden on their families.

Kelati shares a heritage with American Olympian Meb Keflezighi, whom she got to meet at the Foot Locker championships. But the two didn’t spend much time talking about the old country. “We both know about Eritrea so we didn’t need to talk about it,” she said, matter of factly.

That sums things up.

It’s been difficult, of course, to be thousands of miles removed from her family and friends. While Washington, D.C., has the second-largest African-born immigrant population in the U.S., the Eritrean community is undeniably small. But what she lost when she left Eritrea, she gained as part of a new family at Heritage.

A Strong Start

Fresh off an impressive finish at the World Junior Championships, Kelati had a strong start to her first cross-country season at Heritage. Despite stopping to tie her shoe not once, but twice, during the Oatlands Invitational in September 2014, Kelati maintained a 5:52 pace to win in 18:12.

“She was doing what I thought was like, ‘Wow, this is incredible stuff.’ I’ve had some incredible distance runners, but no one ever touched what she was doing,” Gilbert said.
But later in the season, her momentum began to fade. Battling a language barrier, Kelati struggled to explain the level of training she was accustomed to in Eritrea — and her fitness level suffered. She had been conditioned to run on Eritrea’s mountainous terrain, a drastic change from Northern Virginia’s grassy, rolling hills. Despite their best efforts, Gilbert and Kelati could not get aligned on her training. Though she made the national finals, she finished 20th. Given the excitement that surrounded her debut, it was a letdown, and to nobody more than Kelati.

“She speaks Tigrinya, a language most people probably never heard of. It was pretty nerve-racking. I did a lot of big arm motions and speaking loudly, which is not the right approach,” Gilbert said, laughing. “We could look at times and paces all day, but in terms of explaining why we’re doing certain workouts … it was tough last year.”
It wasn’t until they were returning from the state championships that November that Gilbert finally understood Kelati needed to be pushed harder than the rest of the team for her to stay on top.

“Everything was intense in Eritrea. There really was no such thing as a recovery day for her. Even on easy days, she was intense. I told her if we could get things together and work hard she could be the best runner in the United States,” Gilbert said. “I love how she races. I love the aggressiveness. She makes it a guts race. [But] her fitness level last year just didn’t suit that racing strategy.”

Becoming a National Champion

Over the next year, Kelati’s coach and teammates rallied around her, upping her training and helping her to learn English.

“This year, a major goal of ours was to tailor everything [Kelati] did, so she could race the way she wanted to,” Gilbert explained.

Teammates like Georgie Mackenzie used their workouts as an excuse to teach Kelati English. Others brought her an English dictionary and practiced with her during their lunch period, Kelati said.

“She’d teach me phrases in Tigrinya,” Mackenzie recalled. “And we just kind of got along like that. As soon as I met her, I automatically wanted to help her.”

Once Kelati’s English flowed more easily, so did her gradual return to the top of the leaderboard. In her second cross country season at Heritage, she once again placed first at the Oatlands Invitational, though this time even faster than before (17:11), blowing past the second-place finisher, the same runner as the year before, by 72 seconds. Then in October, Kelati took home the title
at the Glory Days Invitational, dipping under 17 minutes for the first time and leaving Lake Braddock junior Kate Murphy, who later won the state 6A title, in her wake.

Here is how she summed up her strategy: “I don’t think about who I am running against, if they want to come with me they can,” she said after Glory Days. “I just want to run fast.”

“She’s just going to hammer,” Gilbert added. “I can try to tell her to do something else, but she’s just going to do it.”

Nowhere was that more apparent than at the Foot Locker meet, a race she came into undefeated. Opening a several-seconds lead early on, Kelati was eventually swallowed by a chase pack. Even then she refused to let anyone else dictate the pace — she was going to run the race on her terms, and that did not include drafting and saving her energy. She fought back to the front and ahead of Illinois’ Maryjeanne Gilbert to win by less than one second.

She was a national champion of a country that was still new to her.

 

The Road Ahead

As Kelati prepares to enter her final year of high school this fall, she wraps up her last year of eligibility to compete for Heritage. She plans to focus on academics and getting into college — a goal echoed by Keflezighi.

“He told me to just be strong,” Kelati said. “And to get a good education. And after, when I’m done [with college], I could become a faster runner. But first I have to get my education.”

Kelati will undoubtedly make appearances in the Washington-area racing scene throughout the year to stay in shape, but will continue to focus her training on the 5k and 10k. Eventually, she wants to transition to competing in half marathons and marathons — maybe even gunning for a spot on the Olympic team.

“My dream is to run the marathon in the Olympics,” she said.

This article originally appeared in the Spring 2016 issue of RunWashington.

• Loudoun Valley senior Drew Hunter broke the national high school record for the indoor and outdoor 3,000 meters Jan. 30, running 7.59.325 at the Camel City Elite Races in Winston-Salem, N.C. The performance was a 5-second improvement over the previous mark on 8:05.46, set three years ago by Hunter’s future University of Oregon teammate Edward Cheserek. Hunter was named Gatorade’s male cross country runner of the year.
• Hunter’s parents, Joan and Marc, were the U.S. Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches Association’s coaches of the year for Virginia boys’ cross country teams. The Vikings won the the 4A title at the state championships in November.
• At Georgetown Day School, Anthony Belber was USATFCCCA’s Washington, D.C. girls’ team coach of the year and Tristan Colaizzi was Gatorade’s male cross country runner of the year. The Mighty Hoppers won the D.C. state and Maryland-D.C. Private School championships.
• Gonzaga’s John Ausema is the USATFCCCA boys’ coach of the year for D.C. and Sidwell Friends School senior Taylor Knibb, D.C. state and Maryland-D.C. Private School champion, is the Gatorade D.C. girl cross country runner of the year.
• Heritage’s Weini Kelati was Virginia’s Gatorade runner of the year.
• Lake Braddock junior Kate Murphy broke the Virginia records for the indoor mile and 1,600 meters at the Camel City Elite Races, running 4:43.97, ahead of Fauquier’s Sarah Bowman’s 4:46.79 from 2005. Along the way, she ran 4:42.22 for 1,600 meters, breaking West Springfield’s Caroline Alcorta‘s state record of 4:44.40.
• Sherwood coach Dan Reeks was named National Federation of State High School Coaches Association Mideast Sectional Coach of the Year.  The Mideast section includes Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia.