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. 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. The first race 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.

Two Foot Locker champions. Another runner one spot from qualifying. Three Nike Cross Nationals individual qualifiers, plus the rest of one of their teams. State champions and runners up. These all add up to a banner year for the D.C. area’s cross country runners.

Members of our coaches panel discussed the season in December and named the All-RunWashington postseason team. The top 10 boys and girls would be a force against any metropolitan area in the country. The D.C., Maryland and Virginia teams are no slouches either. Voting on the panel: Gonzaga’s John Ausema, Walt Whitman’s Steve Hays, Georgetown Visitation’s Kevin Hughes, Lake Braddock’s Mike Mangan, West Springfield’s Chris Pellegrini, T.S Wootton’s Kellie Redmond and Winston Churchill’s Scott Silverstein. Coaches emphasized post-season performances in their evaluations.

During the season, the Oatlands Invitational’s varsity boys race featured nine of the 10 post-season All-RunWashington team members, plus Foot Locker finalist and Virginia 6A champion Jonathan Lamogda. On the girls’ side, Glory Days had five of the 10 post-season honorees in the varsity A race.

Here’s a little bit about our postseason all-stars, and the best teams in D.C, Maryland and Virginia.

All-RunWashington

Rohann Asfaw	Jr	Richard Montgomery	Abigail Green	So	Walter Johnson
Tristan Colaizzi	Sr	Georgetown Day	Heather Holt	So	George C. Marshall
Andrew Hunter	Sr	Loudoun Valley	Weini Kelati	Sr	Heritage
Robert Lockwood	Sr	W.T Woodson	Casey Kendall	Jr	Oakton
Andrew Matson	Sr	Stone Bridge	Taylor Knibb	Sr	Sidwell Friends
Jackson Morton	Sr	Stone Bridge	Page Lester	So	National Cathedral
Kyle Sanok	Sr	Potomac School	Rachel McArthur	Jr	Patriot
Colin Schaefer	Sr	Lake Braddock	Kate Murphy	Jr	Lake Braddock
Fitsum Seyoum	Sr	Tuscarora	Bethlehem Taye	Sr	Paint Branch
Jack Wavering	Sr	Good Counsel	Emma Wolcott	So	Tuscarora

Rohann Asfaw/ Jr./ Richard Montgomery

After a year watching Evan Woods and Diego Zarate duke it out in Montgomery County, Rohann Asfaw ran right to the front of the line. He ultimately finished as the top Maryland runner at the Nike Cross Southeast meet with a sixth place finish, edging Jack Wavering and avenging his loss to Dulaney’s Eric Walz in the state 4A championship. His 15:21 at Nike was two seconds from qualifying for the national meet.

 

Tristan Colaizzi/ Sr./ Georgetown Day School

The ups and downs for Tristan Colaizzi matched the terrain at Fort Dupont Park, where he won the D.C. state championship. Though he weathered rough races at Oatlands and Glory Days,  he turned things up in October and November, running fast (15:34 at the Third Battle Invitational) and gutsy races (winning the MAC title over fellow postseason honoree Kyle Sanok). It all came together at the Foot Locker South meet (Colaizzi lives in Virginia), where he finished 19th in 15:37. He’ll run at Williams College next year, where his brother Griffin raced as a sophomore this year in the NCAA Division III championships.

Abigail Green/ So./ Walter Johnson

Abbey Green‘s sophomore season looked a lot like her first — front running that gave her the Wildcats an early advantage over everyone else. Her consistency gave her teammates something to aim for as they rounded into shape by the end of the season to claim their third Maryland 4A title. At the state meet, she lost only to Foot Locker finalist Maria Coffin, though Bethlehem Taye was just a second behind. Along the way, she won the Montgomery County and 4A West titles, running 18:04 for the former.

Heather Holt/ So./ George Marshall

After winning the state 5A championship as a freshman, Heather Holt couldn’t sneak up on anybody this year. She started strong, with wins at the Monroe Parker Invitational and the DCXC sophomore race, both of which meant beating fellow 5A sophomore Emma Wolcott. While she let Weini Kelati go at the Glory Days Invitational, she raced Kate Murphy hard but wound up third. Wolcott finally got her at the state meet, but two weeks later, Holt was six seconds from a trip to the Foot Locker Championships.

Andrew Hunter/ Sr./ Loudoun Valley

On the fourth Thursday of November, Drew Hunter gave thanks that his cross country season could finally begin in earnest. His September, October and most of November were preludes to his return to the Foot Locker Cross Country Championships in San Diego. Up to, and including the south region meet, he faced scant competition beyond the first half mile of races, and he made it through those months free of injury and ready to go after the national title. By the end, he came out as Northern Virginia’s best high school cross country runner in history and the first local Foot Locker champion on the boy’s side since Sherwood’s Solomon Haile in 2008.

He opened up the pace after the first half mile and left the pack behind, slowing only at the end of a rain-softened course in Balboa Park. Nobody challenged him and he cruised to a 12-second victory in 14:55. While not having any competition made for less-than-thrilling cross country races, it leaves Hunter fresh for a pair of track seasons, including professional-level indoor races this winter. He’ll run at Oregon next year, where his dad Marc studied while running professionally for Athletics West.

Along the way he won every race in which he set foot, moved Footlocker runner-up Sean McGorty‘s Foot Locker South course record down a few seconds to 14:26(on top of the “5k” reportedly being a little longer), and collected his third individual state title, his first after the Vikings moved up to 4A. Loudoun Valley’s team, for that matter, also claimed its first 4A title.

Weini Kelati/ Sr./ Heritage

With a lot to prove, Weini Kelati has run roughshod over the competition on her way to the Foot Locker Cross Country Championships. She started out strong last year when she arrived at Heritage from Eritrea, but waned as the season went on, and though she qualified for Footlocker, finishing 20th was a disappointment for her. With a year to learn English and communicate better with her coach and teammates,  she has not just kept up the pace, but accelerated. She  turned the tables on E.C. Glass junior Libby Davidson, who beat Kelati in both the state and national qualifiers and finals and finished sixth in the latter. She led Heritage to the Virginia 4A title in November.

Kelati has focused more on time than her competition, which has helped because she wasn’t pushed late in a race until the Foot Locker final, and even then she refused to let her competitors share any of the work. She eventually gapped Maryjeanne Gilbert and got nearly a full second ahead for a 17:09 victory, the first local girl to win since Langley’s Erin Keough repeated in 1986.

She recently turned 19, and won’t be able to compete on the high school level next fall.

Casey Kendall/ Jr./ Oakton

Casey Kendall was a dependable leader for two-time defending Virginia 6A champion Oakton. The Cougars spend most of their season racing outside of the D.C. area, but when they came home, Kendall picked up where she had left off. Fourth last year in 6A, she moved up to third to lead her team’s upset bid against Lake Braddock.

Taylor Knibb/ So./ Sidwell Friends

Two more state titles for Taylor Knibb — D.C. and the Maryland-D.C. Private School championships. A win at the DCXC senior race. All soon after starting her cross country season late following the end of her summer triathlon season. She raced through the line and usually, that meant winning.

Page Lester/ So./ National Cathedral School

Page Lester assuredly put together a strong sophomore season, though always on the heels of triathlon training partner Taylor Knibb at both the ISL and Maryland-D.C. Private Schools meet. She won Delaware’s Lake Forest Invitational in September and bested fellow sophomore Abbey Green on the Georgetown Prep Classic’s hilly course in October.

Robert Lockwood/ Sr./ W.T. Woodson

After races in previous years that saw him unwisely taking the lead, Bobby Lockwood became a closer. and how. After licking his wounds after a 21st place finish at the stacked Oatlands race and 16th at Glory Days, he picked it up in November, finishing fifth in the Virginia 6A meet and 16th at Nike Cross Southeast, leading his team: We’re the Waldos.

Andrew Matson/ Sr./ Stone Bridge

Matson was part of a strong Stone Bridge team that rivaled Lake Braddock for supremacy and edged Thomas Jefferson for the 5A title, thanks in large part to Andrew Matson‘s ninth place finish. He ran 15:42 for 23rd at Nike Cross Southeast and finished 11th in the competitive Oatlands Invitational and the Third Battle Invitational.

Rachel McArthur/ Jr./ Patriot

Rachel McArthur did not race much, giving her long racing socks — an elementary school gift from her mother — a longer lifespan. But when she lined up, she showed up. She notched a 17:36 at her season opener at the Third Battle Invitational for second behind Weini Kelati, but had an injury layoff that kept her out of the end of Virginia’s postseason,  but she made it back in time for the Nike Cross Southeast meet, where she scored her second trip to the national meet by virtue of her fifth place finish in her season’s best 5k time of 17:16. She finished 41st at Nike Cross Nationals.

Jackson Morton/ Sr./ Stone Bridge

Standing a full nine feet tall and leading the league in earnestness, Jack Morton‘s fourth place finish lead Stone Bridge to its first 5A title, but his 13th place finish at Nike Cross Southeast was also something to write home about. He was a mainstay in the top 10 in his invitationals throughout the season, with a sixth place finish at Oatlands and fifth place at Third Battle.

Kate Murphy/ Jr./ Lake Braddock

Though cross country fans were robbed of the Murphy-McArthur competition for the most part thanks to the latter’s injury, Kate Murphy had plenty to savor. She started racing late, after early August’s Pan American Junior Track Championships, where Murphy won the 1500 meters, pushed back her post-track break. After claiming the Virginia 6A individual title to lead the way for Lake Braddock to reclaim the team’s first title in three years, two weeks later her 17:00 winning time at Nike Cross Southeast led to the same team result, a 37 point win over Virginia powerhouse Blacksburg. At the national meet, Murphy moved up throughout the race to finish 16th.

Kyle Sanok/ Sr./ Potomac School

Kyle Sanok showed up to all kinds of races and mixed it up with Virginia’s public school teams. He finished fifth at Oatlands and ninth at Third Battle, but also won the Virginia Independent Schools state meet. He ran a 15:40 PR to finish 23rd at Foot Locker South.

Colin Schaefer/ Sr./ Lake Braddock

Repeating a state title after losing the first two finishers isn’t easy, but Colin Schaefer wasn’t afraid of the challenge. He finished fifth after a series of yeoman-like races, picking up top-five finishes beneath his sweatband. He qualified for the Nike Cross Nationals meet with a fifth place finish in the Southeast, then went on to finish 79th. His 15:11 time at Nike Cross Southeast was his season’s best.

Fitsum Seyoum/ Sr./ Tuscarora

His second year of cross country was a doozy for Fitsum Seyoum. Just a year after leaving soccer to take on running full time, he started off winning the Great Meadows, Monroe Parker and DCXC senior invitationals, with just an injury dropout at Oatlands keeping him from finishing among the other eight All-RunWashington postseason honorees. He raced smart at the 5A state meet, trusting that Waleed Suliman, whom he had beaten before, would come back. It didn’t happen, but with a commitment to run at Virginia Tech starting next year, Seyoum will have plenty of chances to build on his rapidly growing body of experience in racing. He finished 22nd at the Foot Locker South regional.

Bethlehem Taye/ Sr./ Paint Branch

Her track speed caught up to Bethlehem Taye‘s developing cross country strength and she saw her Maryland 4A finish jump to third place, just a second behind Abbey Greene, from from 25th the year before. What’s more, she closed out her season with a 14th place finish at the Nike Cross Southeast region meet, the third highest local finisher.

Jack Wavering/ Sr./ Our Lady of Good Counsel

Going up against some heavy hitters never caused Jack Wavering to flinch. During the season coach Tom Arnold debated the merits of his third place finish at Oatlands, losing only to Hunter among the eight other All-RunWashington team members that ran the race, versus his second place finish at the Glory Days Invitational.

Nike Cross Southeast put those in perspective. His seventh place finish at Nike Cross Southeast had him three seconds from an individual trip to the championships, but it was also the start of the scoring for his Good Counsel team’s fifth place finish, 13 points ahead of Virginia’s top team from Lake Braddock.

Emma Wolcott/ So./ Tuscarora

Emma Wolcott had a strong freshman year and improved where she needed to in 2015. She claimed the Virginia 5A individual championship from Heather Holt, setting up two more years of tug-of-war that promises great races. She was runner up at the Monroe Parker Invitational, the DCXC sophomore race, won the season-opening Great Meadow Invitational and the Loudoun County championship. She finished 22nd at Foot Locker South.

All-D.C

John Colucci	So	Gonzaga	A’Ishah Bakayoko	Sr	Georgetown Day
Jacob Floam	Sr	Gonzaga	Emily Carroll	Sr	St. John’s
Tyreece Huff	Sr	Phelps	Abigail Doroshow	Sr	Georgetown Day
Harry Monroe	Jr	Gonzaga	Brennan Dunne	Fr	Georgetown Visitation
Will McCann	Jr	Gonzaga	Michaela Kirvan	So	Georgetown Visitation
Christian Roberts	Jr	Sidwell Friends	Arrington Peterson	Jr	Wilson
Jackson Todd	Jr	Georgetown Day	Katherine Treanor	Sr	Georgetown Day

With four runners on the All-D.C. team, Gonzaga is an easy choice for best boys team in D.C., ahead of Sidwell Friends.

On the girls’ side, Georgetown Day had what coach Anthony Belber thinks could be D.C.’s strongest team, though he gave the mantle of fastest to 2014’s Georgetown Visitation. The Mighty Hoppers proved it with a win over Good Counsel at the Maryland-D.C. Private Schools championship and a 16th place finish at Nike Cross Southeast.

All-Maryland

Michael Abebe	Sr	Northwood	Cecily Davy	Sr	Einstein
Asfaw Estifanos	Sr	Northwestern	Grace Dellapa	Sr	Wootton
Ben Gersch	Sr	Whitman	Sophie El Masry	Sr	Richard Montgomery
Matt Lopez	Sr	Good Counsel	Amanda Hayes-Puttfarken	Sr	Sherwood
Kevin McGivern	Sr	Good Counsel	Emily Murphy	Sr	Walter Johnson
Colin Sybing	Sr	Wootton	Julia Reicin	Jr	Churchill
Liam Walsh	Sr	Quince Orchard	Nandini Satsangi	Fr	Poolesville

When you win three straight state titles, you make a pretty convincing case for the being the best team in the entire state. They’ll go for four next year.

Good Counsel’s boys dominated the Maryland-D.C. Private Schools meet and finished fifth at Nike Cross Southeast.

Brent Bailey	Sr	Centreville	Danielle Bartholomew	Jr	Osbourn Park
Bryce Catlett	Sr	Osbourn Park	Regan Bustamante	Sr	West Springfield
Spencer Jolley	Sr	Lake Braddock	Jill Bracaglia	Sr	Oakton
Conor Lyons	Jr	Lake Braddock	Sara Freix	Sr	Westfield
Brandon McGorty	Jr	Chantilly	Sarah Daniels	So	Lake Braddock
Joe Valle	Sr	Stone Bridge	Emily Schiesl	Jr	Lake Braddock
Saurav Velleleth	Jr	Thomas Jefferson	Faith Zolper	Jr	South County

From the start, when Lake Braddock won the Monroe Parker Invitational while giving Kate Murphy a break, the Bruins looked pretty set for the season. After a hiccup in Minnesota, they came back to Virginia and plowed through the rest of the season, ending with a Nike Cross Southeast title and a 13th place finish at Nike Cross Nationals.

The Lake Braddock boys won their second straight Virginia 6A title, but they faced stiff competition from 5A Stone Bridge at Nike Cross Southeast, and 4A Loudoun Valley could have also given them a tough race.

By all accounts, Drew Hunter and Weini Kelati  are generous runners, each giving of their own time to help their teams win Virginia state championships in November.

But Saturday at San Diego’s Balboa Park, they took the course all to themselves and refused to share the lead with any competitors at the Foot Locker Cross Country Championships. Leading isn’t easy, and it’s a risk in the first competitive races each winner has contested in a year, but in doing so, they both earned every bit of their national championships, the first time the national titlists have come from the same county.

“I wanted to take the race out, make it a tough race for everyone, including myself,” Hunter said.

[button-red url=”http://footlockercc.com/2015/results/nationals/BoysChampionship.pdf” target=”_self” position=”left”] Boys Results[/button-red]Hunter, a senior at Loudoun Valley, ran away from the field early and split 4:31 and 9:25 on his way to a 12 second victory in 14:55, only slowing over the last mile. California’s Phillip Rocha was second. He is the second Virginia boy to win since Charles Alexander from Richmond’s St. Christopher’s School in 1981 and the first local boy since Sherwood’s Solomon Haile in 2008. Hunter finished fourth last year, in contention for the lead during the last mile.

He was two seconds off Reuben Reina‘s record pace, a 14:36 from 1985. Hunter is only the third winning boy from the South, behind both Alexander and Reina. The region includes West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, Kentucky, Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma.

Northern Virginia had been shut out of the individual championship despite runner-up finishes by Chantilly’s Sean McGorty (2012), South Lakes’ Alan Webb (2000), West Springfield’s Sharif Karie (1995 and 1996). Webb served as South team captain, years after being coached by Hunter’s parents.

[button-red url=”http://footlockercc.com/2015/results/nationals/GirlsChampionship.pdf” target=”_self” position=”left”] Boys Results[/button-red]The lead Kelati built early, including’s early charges when others tried to share the lead, disappeared around halfway, but she kept leading, typically a very risky strategy. In contrast to Hunter’s sustained lead, she dragged Illinois’ Maryjeanne Gilbert and Judy Pendergast and North Carolinian Nevada Mareno (whom she had faced in the South regional) up until the last hill near three mile mark.

She got a step ahead of Gilbert and ran to a one second margin in 17:09. Mareno (17:17) and Pendergast (17:20) followed. Annapolis junior Maria Coffin, who won the Maryland 4A championship, finished 27th in 18:22.

Kelati started high school at Heritage in 2014 at 17 and recently turned 19, so although she is a sophomore academically, she has completed her cross country eligibility. She was 20th at last year’s Foot Locker finals.

 

Lake Braddock junior Kate Murphy finished 16th at Nike Cross Nationals Saturday in Portland, leading her team to a 13th place finish, one spot behind Blacksburg, the top Virginia team. The Bruins moved up from 19th place at the mile mark.

Murphy, the southeast region champion and the 24th place finisher in 2014, finished in 17:27.4, 31 seconds behind winner Katie Rainsberger. Patriot junior Rachel McArthur was 41st in 18:04, after finishing fifth at the regional meet.

The Bruins’s finishers included Samantha Schwers in 106th (18:55), Sarah Daniels in 120th (19:03), Emily Schiesl in 124 (19:08) and Sonya Butseva in 152 (19:23). Butseva is the only senior among them. Taylor Kitchen (192nd in 20:29) and Daly Ferguson (196th in 21:01) also raced.

Their teammate, senior Colin Schaefer, was the only local boy to compete, finishing in 79th in 16:03.

 

 

Foot Locker

[button-red url=”http://footlockercc.com/2015/results.shtml” target=”_self” position=”left”] Foot Locker Results[/button-red]Loudoun Valley senior Drew Hunter broke the Foot Locker South course record, running 14:26 for a course judged to be roughly 40 meters longer than when Chantilly’s Sean McGorty ran 14:28 in 2012. He had a 33-second lead over Western Albemarle’s Gannon Willcutts, who won the state 3A title.   Hunter finished fourth in last year’s finals. Virginia boys took five of the 10 spots for the national meet. Jonathan Lamogda, from Virginia Beach’s Cox High School, was third. State 5A champion Waleed Suliman, from Richmond’s Douglas Freeman, was sixth, and Micah Pratt, a homeschooled Lynchburg resident, was ninth.

Other top local finishers included Georgetown Day School senior Tristan Colaizzi, an Alexandria resident, in 19th; Tuscarora senior Fistum Seyoum in 22nd, Potomac School senior Kyle Sanock in 23rd and Loudoun Valley sophomore Peter Morris in 43rd.

Heritage senior Weini Kelati, who was fifth at least year’s Foot Locker regional meet, had a 22-second lead with her 16:43 finish. E.C. Glass junior Libby Davidson was the only other Virginia qualifier, in third. George Marshall sophomore Heather Holt was one place and six seconds from qualifying. Kelati was 20th in last year’s finals, Davidson was sixth.

After Kelati and Holt, the rest of the local top five were Tuscarora sophomore Emma Wolcott in 22nd, Westfield senior Sara Freix in 23rd and Oakton senior Jill Bracaglia in 28th.

D.C. and D.C.-area Maryland competitors were sparse at the Foot Locker Northeast meet in New York. The top finisher, Kayla Smith, is D.C. resident who runs for Archbishop Spalding in Severn, Md. Smith was 35th, just ahead of Sidwell Friends senior Taylor Knibb. Poolesville freshman Nandini Satsangi was 49th. No D.C. boys ran in the seeded race, but James Hubert Blake senior James Newport was 98th.

Maria Coffin, the Annapolis junior who won the Maryland 4A championship, finished third to qualify for the finals.

 

Nike Cross Southeast

Kate Murphy handily won the championship race in Cary, N.C., running 17:00 to outdistance Elly Henes, who ran the 2014 DCXC Invitational, by 24 seconds. In 17:35, Rachel McArthur raced for the first time in more than a month to claim an individual invitation to the Nike Cross Nationals meet in Portland. A partial tear in her quadriceps kept her out of Virginia’s postseason races. She won the regional meet in 2104, and she and Murphy finished 25th and 24th, respectively, at last year’s finals.

[button-red url=”http://nxnse.runnerspace.com/eprofile.php?event_id=303&do=news&news_id=382536″ target=”_self” position=”left”] Nike Cross Southeast Results[/button-red]Lake Braddock’s Bruin XC Club girls won, with Emily Schiesl in 23rd, Sonya Butseva in 25th, Sarah Daniels in 28th and Samantha Schwers in 41st to close out scoring over 3A Virginia champions and defending NXSE winners Blacksburg 62-99. Walter Johnson’s Wildcat running team finished eighth, Georgetown Day School’s Might Hoppers finished 16th and Brentsville District finished 17th.

Paint Branch senior Bethlehem Taye was 14th overall, West Springfield senior Reagan Bustamante was 22nd and GDS senior Katherine Treanor was 24th.

On the boys’ side, Schaefer finished fourth in 15:11, 16 seconds out of first. By virtue of the top five boys being on non-qualifying teams, Richard Montgomery junior Rohann Asfaw (sixth in 15:21) and Our Lady of Good Counsel senior Jack Wavering (seventh in 15:22) did not make it to the national meet, but they came home with solid PRs. Asfaw avenged his 4A Maryland state meet loss to Dulaney’s Eric Walz, who was 10th. Stone Bridge senior Jack Morton (13th) and W.T. Woodson senior Bobby Lockwood (16th) rounded out the local top five.

The Good Counsel Harriers were the top local team in fifth, ahead of Lake Braddock’s Bruin XC Club in seventh, Stone Bridge in ninth, Brentsville in 14th, the DCXC Club of Gonzaga runners in 20th, We’re the Waldos from W.T. Woodson in 24th, Thomas Jefferson in 27th and the Barons of Bethesda-Chevy Chase in 32nd.

College Cross Country

Several D.C. area runners competed in the NCAA Division I Cross Country Championships Nov. 21 in Louisville.

[button-red url=”http://www.ncaa.com/ncaa-cross-country-championship-live-timing” target=”_self” position=”left”] NCAA Results[/button-red]Two northern Virginia natives, Sean McGorty and Thomas Curtain, finished in the top 50 at the NCAA Division I Cross Country Championships Nov. 21 in Louisville. Among local colleges, Georgetown’s men finished 10th behind sophomore Jonathan Green‘s fifth-place finish and the Hoya women finished 20th. McGorty, a Stanford junior who graduated from Chantilly, was seventh. Curtain, a Virginia Tech senior from Loudoun County High School, was 22nd.

Here, at least among names I recognized, they are:

Women’s 6k

158. Sophie Chase – Jr – Stanford (Lake Braddock)
216. Allie Klimkiewicz -Fr – Princeton (Oakton)

Men’s 10k

7. Sean McGorty -Jr – Stanford (Chantilly)
22. Thomas Curtin – Sr – Virginia Tech (Loudoun Valley)
55. Chase Weaverling – So – Virginia (Poolesville)
73. Nicholas Tuck – Jr – Penn (Lake Braddock)
104. Ahmed Bile – Jr – Georgetown (Annandale)
221. Kevin Monogue – Fr – Penn (Lake Braddock)

For McDonogh sophomore Dalton Hengst, the hay was in the barn.  He had a great week of practice, a healthy taper and all that was left was about fifteen minutes of hard work plowing through the fields in his racing shoes.

[button-red url=”http://www.mocorunning.com/meet.php?meet_id=3296″ target=”_self” position=”left”] Results [/button-red]A controlled pace combined with a final surge over the last quarter mile paid off for Hengst as he crossed the line in 15:49 to beat out Good Counsel senior and defending champion Jack Wavering by two seconds (15:51) and claim his first Maryland-D.C. Private Schools Cross Country Championship.

Cool temperatures and clear skies made for fast conditions.  Only the rolling hills and gusty winds threatened to slow the field of runners as they traversed the Agricultural Farm Park in rural Derwood,Md.

“I had never raced [Wavering] before. It kind of scared me,” Hengst said. “But, this last week I really nailed my workouts. I ran a ladder workout and finished an 800 on the way down in 2:09, so I was feeling great. My coach was yelling at me at the top of the hill, ‘You closed with a 2:09! You can do it! Your kick is better!’ That workout really got me confident. I really tapered for this one and it paid off.  I was going for it. I am so happy!”

The two appeared set for a mid-season matchup at the Georgetown Prep Classic in October, and Hengst was salivating for the opportunity to race him, but Good Counsel did not make the trip.

Hengst got off to a fast start, well ahead of the pack before settling down and allowing Wavering and Georgetown Day’s Tristan Colaizzi (third in 16:10) to dictate the pace.

“I let Wavering lead the whole way which was a great strategy for me, but probably hurt him a lot on a windy, windy day,” Hengst said.

“I knew [Hengst] was fast,” Wavering said. “The pace was really honest which usually benefits me a lot. I tried to break him on some of the hills by throwing in surges but he hung on for dear life and pulled it out in the last two hundred meters. My legs were burning up. The race went about as well as I could have hoped.”

[Best_Wordpress_Gallery id=”4″ gal_title=”Md./D.C. Private School XC”]

For McDonogh coach Jeff Sanborn, there was little surprise that Hengst would deliver.

“We were expecting him to do well. When this kid arrived [at McDonogh], we knew we had a good one.  The kid is a tough racer — a beast. He’s just built for cross country. He’ll do anything you ask him to do.  He’s got heart and he runs possessed,” Sanborn said.

“When we came here today, we knew Jack Wavering was the guy to beat and it panned out to be the perfect race. Dalton was going to go with anyone who was going. If you’re going to beat him you’ve got to go hard and go early. He doesn’t hold anything back.”

On the girls’ side, there were few surprises as the one-two spots were reclaimed for a second consecutive year. Sidwell Friends senior Taylor Knibb, won the varsity large school race in an impressive 18:25, followed by National Cathedral sophomore Page Lester (18:53).

The only real drama was who would take third. Good Counsel sophomore Claudia Wendt claimed that spot (19:22) despite sitting out the last six weeks due to injury.

“This race is just not very comfortable in any aspect,” Knibb said. “I noticed the wind a little bit, but that’s just part of cross country.  It helped that we raced here two weeks ago (for the Independent School League championship) so I had a bit of a refresher of the course.”

In the end, only three points separated first and second place as Georgetown Day (44) beat Good Counsel (47) for top honors in the varsity girls’ large school division.  Georgetown Day scorers finished 4, 5, 9, 12 and 14.  Good Counsel runners came in 3, 6, 10, 13 and 15 to take second by a narrow margin.  Sidwell Friends captured third place with 82 points.

In the boys’ varsity large school competition, Wavering’s Our Lady of Good Counsel team took home the top prize handily besting second place Gonzaga 26-69. All five of Good Counsel’s scorers finished in the top ten (2, 4, 5, 6, 9). Sidwell Friends took third (93) overall.

“It’s nice to win, but I’m especially excited about how our guys have continued to make progress over the last five weeks.  Our 2, 3 and 4 guys have really closed the gap behind Jack [Wavering] and if we can continue to close that gap, we’re legitimately a really good team as we head into Nike [Southeast Regional cross country championships],” said  Good Counsel coach Tom Arnold.

In the varsity girls’ small school event, freshman Julia Luljak from the Park School finished with top honors in 20:33.  Joy Reeves from St. Andrew’s Episcopal was second (21:08) and Julia Schaefer from Annapolis Area Christian came in third (21:17).

Team honors went to St. Andrews’s Episcopal (50 points) followed by St. Maria Goretti (67) in second and Rockbridge Academy in third (76).

The D.C. area only had one champion at the Maryland state cross country championships, but it was one that’s easy to remember: the Walter Johnson girls.

[button-red url=”http://www.mocorunning.com/meet.php?meet_id=3566″ target=”_self” position=”left”] Results [/button-red]The Wildcats claimed their third consecutive 4A team championship with a 51-85 win over Dulaney,  a team coach Tom Martin said was the fastest in school history. Their team score matched their winning total last year, and their scoring five all fit in the top 21.

Montgomery County did have three individual runners-up in WJ’s Abbey Green, Richard Montgomery’s Rohann Asfaw and Poolesville’s Nandini Satsangi.

Green, a sophomore, ran 18:59 for the three-mile course to trail Annapolis junior Maria Coffin‘s 18:25 win.

“A lot of people warned me not to go out too fast, and I think we still did, but it wasn’t too bad,” she said. “I knew Maria was really strong, so I didn’t expect her to come back, so I had to stay with her as long as I could.”

Green finished fourth here as a senior, a race she said was a little easier because she didn’t know quite what to expect from the challenging course.

“I didn’t have a plan then,” she said. “I knew more about the course this time and that made me a little nervous, but in the end it was fine.”

Paint Branch senior Bethlehem Taye finished one second behind Green.

WJ senior Emily Murphy finished fifth, after two seventh-place finishes.

I went out faster than I normally have the last two years, and it scared me at first,” she said. “Then I thought ‘I can do this, this is good.'”

Understandably, Martin was proud of his team.

“We started off at 16th place at the Oatlands Invitational, but they never panicked,” he said of a race Murphy and junior Katriane Kirsch sat out of. “Even if they raced they way they usually do, we’d have finished just eighth. But they kept getting after it , doing the work, and by the time they got to the postseason, they did what they’ve learned to do the last few years. My girls are happy, that’s all that matters.”

Suffice it to say, they’ll shoot for a fourth consecutive title in 2016, if for nothing but to give Kirsch a charmed high school career in which she doesn’t know what it’s like to not be on a state champion team. The key to that?

Murphy, who will graduate next spring, said keeping the sport fun will be chief among their priorities.

“We focus on team spirit,” she said. “We have lots of costumes, work on some puns. Last year we made t-shirts with Mr. Martin’s face printed on them.”

Bethesda-Chevy Chase was third in girls’ 4A, and Walt Whitman was fifth.

Richard Montgomery senior Sophie El Masry staged a comeback, finishing eighth after managing to salvage a 19th place finish that was basically the highlight of 2014’s awful season.

“We couldn’t figure it out, my legs just weren’t there,” she said of her junior year. “We tried giving me plenty of rest, icing, massage, but we couldn’t figure it out.”

She felt better coming into this season, and an experiment during a meet against Bethesda-Chevy Chase, when she was told to run hard from the gun, until she tired out. She ended up not tiring out.

Asfaw, a junior who finished eighth last year, hung on winner Eric Walz, a senior from Dulaney, which won the 4A men’s race. The pair was part of a group of Dulaney and Severna Park runners who separated from the pack in the first mile and then whittled down to two. Walz held a consistent lead, but gapped Asfaw coming out of “the dip” on the way to the finish.

“He got a me on the uphill and took off,” Asfaw said. “I felt like I ran the race really smart, I’m happy with it.

“I ran my own race. It’s a little hard waiting in the back of the pack, but it worked for me.”

He finished in 16:20, an improvement over his less-windy 16:33 last year. Walz’s 16:06 was off of Evan Woods‘ 15:49 winning time last year and his own 15:56 runner-up time.

“I felt a lot more confident this year,” Asfaw said. “The way this season went, I got a lot of confidence from what I was able to do.”

That included wins at the Montgomery County championship and 4A West region meet.

Michael Abebe, a Northwood senior, ran for seventh in the 4A race after finishing fourth in the 3A race. The difference was stark between the two divisions.

“There wasn’t as much competition last year, and I ran faster, but the conditions were harder out there today and I think I did well,” he said. “It was really windy, but there were a great pack of guys out there and we made a lot of moves. It was a fun race, I tried to be as competitive as I could be.”

The T.S. Wootton duo of Colin Sybing and Cliff Tilley finished ninth and 17th, respectively, and both bounced back from awful races last year. Their team finished fifth, two spots behind Bethesda-Chevy Chase, who set the standard for D.C. area teams in the boys’ 4A race.

Sybing reinjured his hip in 2014, and Tilley was coming off of a week where he set several PRs for number of times he lost his lunch. He hit 10 a few times.

“I was in third place in the beginning and when the lead pack passed me, I tried to focus on their shoulders and stay on them as much as I could, keep myself moving through the rolling hills,” he said.

Tilley was pleased with his discipline during the race.

“It’s really tempting, when people pass you, to hurry up and fight back even if you’re not ready,” he said. “I kept calm when that happened and made moves when they were right for me.”

Poolesville’s Satsangi made a strong debut as a freshman. Her penchant for hill running helped her hit second place in the 3A race.

“I liked the course,” she said. “It was tough, and I expected that, but it went faster than I thought it would. I got caught up in the crowd and went a little fast early on.”

She caught up to a pack of three coming out of the dip and didn’t slow down, passing them all on the way to a 19:45 finish.

Poolesville was the seventh girls’ 3A team.

Blake senior James Newport led local finishers in the boys’ 3A race in fifth.

“I wanted to take out the first mile pretty fast, but then I had to make a move to get out of a pack I was running with in the second mile,” he said. “I was alone in the third mile, and I slowed down. I think a little competition would have kept me awake in the last mile.”

Blake, 10th this year, moved down from 4A, where Newport was 48th.

The patterns in the Virginia state cross country championships repeated almost as frequently as the pop music on the public address system.

By the time someone started wondering why Pink Floyd’s “Run Like Hell” didn’t make the mix, it was apparent: Dominant individual performances led to team victories.

Lake Braddock girls in 6A. Heritage girls in 4A. Loudoun Valley boys in 4A. Tuscarora girls in 5A.

Stone Bridge and Lake Braddock boys in 5A and 6A substituted three finishers in the top 10 to win their races.

[button-red url=”http://www.runhigh.com/2015RESULTS/R111315AA.html” target=”_self” position=”left”] Results [/button-red]LB junior Kate Murphy and Heritage senior Weini Kelati each moved up one place from their 2014 finishes, and Loudoun Valley senior Drew Hunter won his first 4A title, after collecting the prior two 3A individual wins. Emma Wolcott took first in 5A, besting defending champion Heather Holt of George Marshall. Cox’s Jonathan Lomogda, from Virginia Beach and Waleed Suliman, of Richmond’s Douglas Freeman, won the boys 6A and 5A individual titles.

The course was slower than in years past, a combination of rain Thursday, long grass and strong winds. The Thursday rains caused the Virginia High School League to bar pre-race course access at Great Meadows in The Plains for previewing.

Without chances to run the actual state meet course at either of the two invitationals held at Great Meadows, the races played to the advantage of teams with experience on the course, like the West Springfield girls.

“I think it helped that our five scoring girls had all run this course before, so it didn’t hurt us not to see it yesterday,” said West Springfield coach Chris Pellegrini. “I told them to get in position in the first stretch, where the grass is even longer, but don’t do anything more than you have to.

The highly-anticipated matchup between Kate Murphy and Patriot junior Rachel McArthur in the 6A girls race was deferred after an injury that took McArthur, the defending champion, out of the regional meet. The two traded titles at the outdoor state track championships in the spring and their careers have followed similar trajectories.

Patriot coach Adam Daniels held her out in hopes of giving it another week to heal, with a chance for her to run if her team finished in the top six at the North region championship, but the Pioneers finished seventh.

“She could have run the race and maybe finished in the top three, but it was a risk,” Daniels said. “She’ll have a lot of races in her future.”

They will decide in the next week whether McArthur will try for Nike Cross Nationals or the Foot Locker championships or if she needs more recuperation.

Murphy, winner of August’s Pan Am Junior Games 1,500 title, was left with little resistance on her way to a 26-second victory, in 18:20, over Cosby freshman Rachel Northcutt. Sarah Daniels (10th overall), Emily Schiesl (11th), Sonya Butseva (14th) and Samantha Schweers (16th) followed to close out the lowest team score of the day at 44.

Coach Mike Mangan said though the lack of a challenge up front to Murphy would have otherwise given her a chance to relax, the momentum from her competitive drive was too much to hold back.

“She’s in great shape and it’s hard to hold her back,” he said. As for the team, he said, “everyone ran well. They went out there on a windy day and still had five in the top 16. I don’t think you could ask for much more than that.”

Two-time defending champion Oakton was second with 77 points, behind junior Casey Kendall and senior Jill Bracaglia‘s third- and fourth-place finishes. Kendall was fourth in 2014.

“We never really knew what we could, or couldn’t, do,” Kendall said. “We just put it out there and saw what happened. (Today,) Jill passed me with about a kilometer to go and she got some space on me but I knew, even though I was feeling bad, I had to be up there with her.”

“We just race a lot better in the postseason,” Bracaglia said. “Once we get to conferences, regions, states, we’re ready to go.”

Coach Alisa Byers shed some light on that.

The Cougars stayed away from a lot of the routine Northern Virginia invitationals, opting for trips to Raleigh and to Charlottesville’s Panorama Farms course.

“A lot of our runners are new to cross country, so I wanted to give the track people some experience with flat courses early on,” she said. “Once they got used to it, we moved everyone on to more of a real cross country at Albemarle (Panorama Farms) then shut it down and then we gave them a chance to rest up for the post-season.”

James Madison finished third with 89 points through the efforts of a largely-underclass team, behind senior Morgan Whittrock‘s 15th place finish.

Two points behind fourth-place Ocean Lakes, West Springfield managed to move up a spot from the North region meet.

“I think we ran decently at regions, but today, we had two high-B performances, a B+ and two As,” Pellegrini said.

Senior Reagan Bustamante was first for the Spartans, in eighth place.

“I just tried to get out of the wind in the first mile,” she said. “I found a pack and stuck behind them. When they went, I went. Whenever I moved up, I would just hang behind people for a while.”

The season’s big surprise came from South County, which sent its first girls team to the state meet after finishing fourth in the Northern region championships. Much of that, coach T.D. Holsclaw said, came from planning their seasons more carefully.

“We decided to change some things from last year after talking to athletes and parents,” he said. “They were always ending up being hurt by seasons end. We incorporating cross training and were taking it very easy at first.”

He credited juniors Faith Zolper (ninth) and Louisa McPherson (29th), both individual qualifiers last year, with pulling the team along. They finished eighth at the state meet, one place behind Robinson, led by junior Lia Hanus in 27th. 

Despite losing their top two finishers from last year’s state championship team, who incidentally finished first and second overall, Lake Braddock defended its 6A title with 46 points, ahead of James Madison, the surprise team on the men’s side all year. The Bruins put three finishers in the top 11, with Colin Schaefer finishing fourth, junior Conor Lyons finishing eighth and senior Spencer Jolley finishing 11th.

“I felt like after our first race this year, we just came together and knew what we wanted to do this year,” Schaefer said. “We wanted to win two state titles today and we got them.”

Mangan said he told his runners to go out noticeably slow in the first mile to tuck in, away from the wind. That was tough for Lyons, who’s pretty tall and would have trouble finding a fullback to block the wind for him. He’s a transfer from Indiana, and Schaefer said the best way to orient him to running for the Bruins was to take him on the hilliest runs he could find.

“He didn’t exactly like those runs,” Schaefer said.

Lyons was a novice on the state meet course, and got a rude awakening from the long stretch to the finish, despite the bevy of supporters lining the fence a few feet away.

“That finish was quite possibly the hardest stretch I’ve ever run,” he said.

Madison improved to second in the Northern region, and the state, after finishing 12th at the regional meet. They did it with strong pack running, though they lacked a front runner. Junior Sean Grimm led the way in 19th, but sophomore Zach Holden (25th), sophomore Chamberlain Zulauf (32nd), junior Patrick Murphy (33rd) and senior Conner Castellaw (36th) kept the pack close together.

Chantilly junior Brandon McGorty, most famous for his New Balance Indoor Nationals runner-up, resembled his long-distance-inclined older brothers Sean and Ryan, finishing sixth in what he said was by far his best cross country race.

“I had a long talk with my dad last night about where I was with running right now,” he said. “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.”

His goal was top 15, and raced with that in mind, but as he ate up ground, he found his energy maintaining more than it ever had before.

“I started passing people, and I don’t do that too much late in a cross country race,” he said. “I just felt better than I ever had in cross country after, basically, the first mile mark.”

Contrary to expectations for a mid-distance runner, he was not salivating to unleash his kick on the long final straight.

“I was getting pretty tired by that point,” he said. “I was ready for the race to be over.”

Bobby Lockwood, a W.T. Woodson senior, edged McGorty by a place for fifth, in large part because of his racing savvy.

On his third try on this course, he figured out the vexing long, final stretch.

“I knew if someone sprinted at the start, they would come back to me,” he said. “You can’t push that whole thing, but I did have a constant debate in my head, should I not

let them go? What if I can’t make up that ground?’ But I was able to hold myself back.”

Before he got there, he had his mind on the ground.

“I ran off of people’s shoulders and listened to their footsteps,” he said. “If it sounded quishy, I was going to find harder ground. I just tried to use the downhills to my advantage and not kill myself on the way up them.”

Brent Bailey, a Centreville senior, also started slow, but wasn’t sure how wise it was.

“Last year, I started too fast and died, so I started slow, but maybe too slow,” he said. “I just tried to make up ground.”

He had his entire team with him this year, a major improvement over 2014, when the Wildcats missed qualifying by two seconds. Bringing seven runners to this race was their goal all season. They finished 10th.

“It meant a lot to the school, they actually had a pep rally for us,” he said. “It was awesome. It was unprecedented. People at school know how big this was for us to make it.”

The Patriot boys made their first state meet in two years but a slim margin — four points over Chantilly at the regional meet. It was a kind reversal, after missing out by four points one year and three another. They finished seventh in the state this year.

“It was a special accomplishment,” Daniels said. “It was exactly the situation you’re talking about when you say every point, every man matters. We were on the wrong end of that before.”

Junior Eric Speeney (26th) got a big assist this year from classmate Greg Moore (34th), who transferred from Grafton in Yorktown.

“Eric’s the kind of guy who doesn’t want to be number one unless he’s worked for it, and Greg’s been pushing him all year. It’s been great for both of them.”

Weini Kelati did not let up this year. When the Eritrean-born runner came out of nowhere at last year’s Oatlands Invitational and breezed through the field. It seemed like only a matter of time until she would be contending to be the fastest high school runner in America. Then she met E.C. Glass’ Libby Davidson, who eased away from a fading Kelati when the postseason started.

Well, not anymore. With Kelati’s adjustment to American culture has come a vastly-improved communication with coach Doug Gilbert.

“Now that I know more English, I can talk to my coach,” she said. “We can make plans and talk about my training.”

Which is terrifying for any Foot Locker hopefuls. Her 16:29 at the Third Battle Invitational in Winchester is the top-ranked cross country 5k, nationally.

She put seven seconds on Davidson by the first mile, 17 by the second, and she wound up with a 29-second margin in the 5A race, in 17:22 for the fastest girls time of the day. The thick grass, she said, bothered her, but apparently not too much.

Behind her, senior Georgie Mackenzie finished fourth to help the Running Pride claw its way up from last year’s third place finish, and the team’s  victory earned them Heritage’s first state title in any sport.

“All seven of our girls stepped up and did exactly what we had to,” Gilbert said. “I didn’t want to get too excited, I told the girls rankings don’t win races, but they’ve shown on tough courses they can run strong.”

The team was third in 2014, and the four seniors on the team got to go out in historic style.

“This is the end of the road for some of our girls in terms of high school cross country, so this was special,” he said.

Their shouts of delight when the results came out were matched, or even surpassed, but a chorus of “second!” from a sea of green-and-yellow-clad runners and their parents. Loudoun Valley had been second before, last year, in 3A, trailing powerhouse Blacksburg. But after losing four varsity runners, and finishing fifth at the West region meet a week before, the Vikings came back and passed up E.C. Glass, Jefferson Forest, Millbrook and Lafayette from the East region.

Before the race, coach Joan Hunter ruminated on her team’s evolving goals, which once were to just qualify for the state meet.

“After seeing how close to second place we were at regionals, with two of our girls having sub-par days, (we figure) we might make some noise at state,” she said.

Sophomore Natalie Morris rebounded from a rough regional race to lead the team in sixth, and felt a lot better along the way.

“I started out slow, so I felt good the rest of the race, I just kept passing people,” she said. “Last year I barely broke 20 minutes, but I started out this season with a PR and have been running faster every race. We figured if we all ran well, be could catch a lot of the teams that beat us at regionals.”

Junior Kimmie Donohue finished 22nd, impressive considering she started running almost two months ago after spending five months battling what Hunter called a gruesome foot injury, then racing herself into shape.

“Well, my times have been slower all year, but this race, I finally felt good again,” she said. “I feel like myself again out here.”

 

It would have taken a sinkhole on the course, or maybe two, to keep Drew Hunter from winning the 4A title, which he did by almost a minute in 15:03, compared to Lafayette junior Konrad Steck‘s 15:59, well off of his 14:41 record, set last year. Once he crossed the finish line, he stared back down the stretch to see the future of his Loudoun Valley program.

In fifth and sixth, sophomores Colton Bogucki and Peter Morris. In 20th, his brother, Jacob, a freshman. In 25th, sophomore Chase Dawson. They combined for 47 points to win over Fauquier’s 114.

Bogucki knew that breathing was important in running his race, but found that too much air could be bad. The strong headwind kept him uncomfortable.

“When I opened my mouth, the wind would just push its way in and it hurt my chest, especially in the first stretch,” he said. “Once I got into a rhythm and got my breathing on track, things got better. Peter and I worked together the whole race and we really picked it up at the end.

You may remember the Morris name from such races as the girls 4A, where his twin sister Natalie also finished sixth.

The team’s goal for Drew Hunter individually has been to avoid overracing and prepare him for postseason championship racing in December, either at the Foot Locker championships, where he was fourth last year, or Nike Cross Nationals. He ran a hard 14:20 at the Third Battle Invitational to lead the country’s high school boys, though times aren’t comparable among cross country courses, and most races have been opportunities to tinker with approaches to racing with focuses on different segments of the race.

The 4A West teams wound up running their regional in Martinsville, near the North Carolina border, giving the runners a long school bus ride to and from the meet, but in contrast, the feeling of a relative home meet when coming to The Plains.

“I slept much better in my own bed,” Bogucki said.

With only Drew Hunter, Will Smagh and Nick Mercuro graduating, the Vikings are in strong enough shape already for the future, but thanks to approval from the Loudoun Valley School Board to start a self-funded indoor track team, Hunter sees her team, and the county’s running potential, get even higher.

“Not having indoor track was a problem mainly because of lack of structure for the kids,” she said. “Even the most dedicated kids find it hard to stay motivated through the winter with no competition in sight.”

 

The 5A girls jumbled the finishing order from a year ago. Tuscarora sophomore Emma Wolcott, third last year, bested defending champion Heather Holt, and both outpaced Princess Anne’s Doria Martingayle, from Virginia Beach, who finished third after recording a runner-up finish in 2014.

“I felt good at the beginning, but as I got close to the end, I lost feeling in my legs,” she said. “I don’t know what happened.”

What happened, behind her, was the George Marshall team improving on its sixth place finish last year, by finishing fifth. And Holt’s twin sister, Ashley, had a successful finish, placing 25th, after not finishing last year. The Statesmen return their top six runners next year.

“I feel like the team had more motivation this year,” Heather Holt said. “We knew we wanted to get back to states, and we started getting more people coming out to run.”

Tuscarora repeated as 5A champions with a 75-89 margin over Albemarle. Along with Wolcott at the front, freshman Ava Hasselbrock finished fifth.

“We had two up front, but we have a lot of experienced leadership, too, and that was important,” said coach Troy Harry. “We knew the race would be won in the 3-4-5 slots.”

It turns out the Huskies had one to spare. In addition to Raiya Alnsour (23rd), Kmaljeet Athwal (30th) and Mariam Kolbai (32nd), Gillian King (33rd) crossed the line at the same time as Kolbai.

“They know how to race people, run in a pack,” Harry said.

Wolcott’s bid for a state title came after studying Holt’s general front-running strategy, one that worked out, to the tune of an individual title last year.

“I was stuck early on, but I got out to Heather and Doria but gave them about a three-foot gap,” she said.”We lost Doria, but when we got to the last stretch, Heather slowed down and I kept going.”

“Racing was a lot of fun on this course,” she said. “I really like it because it goes up and down a lot.”

Judging from Tuscarora’s last two years, she’s familiar with the ups.

Potomac Falls finished sixth, led by Deirdre Gilmore in 10th.

Stone Bridge knows all about small numbers. After missing out on a team championship by a few points here and there, they put a good team effort together to win the 5A division with 78 points, six ahead of Thomas Jefferson.

Senior Jack Morton led the way in fourth, and Andrew Matson and Joe Valle followed in eighth and ninth.

TJ kicked off scoring with junior Saurav Velleleth‘s third place finish.

Individually, Freeman’s Suliman went out hard, and Tuscarora senior Fitsum Seyoum figured he, like many runners fighting the wind, would come back to him, but that didn’t happen. Suliman had a 15 second margin, winning in 15:41.

“A lot of respect to him, he went out there the same way Drew Hunter did and just went for it,” Seyoum said. “I beat him at the Milestat Invitational, so I knew I could beat him again, but it just didn’t happen today.”

Taylor Knibb repeated as D.C.’s champion at Fort Dupont Park to kick off a slew of state meets over the next eight days of state meets for local cross country runners. She’ll also have a chance to defend her D.C./Maryland Private Schools championship next Saturday in Derwood, Md.; Virginia’s public schools have their state meet Friday and Saturday in The Plains; and Maryland’s public schools will face off Saturday at Hereford.

Though she faced scant competition on her way to a 71 -second victory in 19:32,  an improvement over her meet record that left her wobbly-legged afterward, Knibb hammered the entire course, not with disregard for next week’s private school state meet, but with an eye toward it.

“Every race can be a different kind of workout for me,” she said. “Today was a chance to work on feeling good even after a hard start, Page (Lester, of National Cathedral School) and I went a little hard at ISLs (the Independent School League championship) last weekend, and hills that start this race made me feel just like that again.”

Adding to that effort, the Fort Dupont Park course was a little longer than in years past, and a steady rain added a few slick spots to an already-technical course.

“I stopped hearing other runners a few minutes in, but I didn’t to look back,” she said. “I had to watch the ground the whole race; I almost few a few times.”

Had she looked back, she wouldn’t have seen much. Though she had a strong lead over Georgetown Day School senior, Katherine Treanor, Treanor, with senior Abigail Doroshow in third, were focused on leading the Hoppers to a 37-53 win over Georgetown Visitation.  Georgetown Day won the ISL championship 42-57, also over Visitation, a week prior in Derwood.

“It was kind of narrow in the beginning, so everyone was getting boxed in,” Treanor said. “People go out so fast.”

They have to, because less than 600 meters into the race, the course narrows for series of trails that don’t open back up to allow for much passing until after the first mile mark.

“We have no problem letting anyone else take the lead,” Doroshow said. “I’ve started races in dead last, but you can tell you’ve made the right choice when you pass people and you can tell their breathing is hard and I’m still feeling good.”

Treanor slowed down to speed up, so to speak, a few times on the course.

“There were turns where I just jogged in place and waited for the course to clear,” she said.

On the boys’ side, Georgetown Day senior Tristan Colaizzi won the title in 17:12, a meet record by 22 seconds. He tied with teammate Aiden Pillard in 2013, with Pillard getting the win. Colaizzi and the rest of the GDS varsity sat out last year, but this year they were back, again going 1-2 with junior Jackson Todd in second, but the Hoppers lost a close race with Sidwell, 41-48.

Like Knibb, Colaizzi used the race as an opportunity to test himself on hills.

“They’re my weak point,” he said. “Hills take it out of me, for sure, so today I wanted to go after them and also try to have enough of a gap that I could focus more on my footing when it got slippery and protect my ankles. That added a fun element because I didn’t have to fight for the tangents and I could pick my footing a little more.”

Todd shook off a disappointing race a week ago and tried to remind himself that he was out there because he loved the sport.

“I was doing a little better this week than I was last week,” he said. “I just tried to relax and enjoy the race and try to stay on my feet.”

The team score against Sidwell was an improvement over their Mid-Atlantic Athletic Conference meet a week prior, which they dropped 29-47. Both teams ran without top-five contributors, Sidwell sat Christian Roberts and GDS left Josh Shelton on the bench.

GDS coach Anthony Belber said although he as a D.C. native appreciated the opportunity for an all-District championship race, it came at a busy time in the season for the private schools, which fielded nine of the  top 10 individual girls and six of the top 10 boys. With the league championship a week before and the D.C./Maryland meet a week after, this is often the ideal weekend for runners to rest.

With Roberts out this weekend for Sidwell, junior Amal Mattoo took charge with a third-place finish in 17:50, edging defending champion Tyreece Huff, of Phelps, by two seconds.

“I knew I wasn’t going to get a great time on this course today, so I tried to have fun with the race,” he said.  “I love the thousand-meter downhill to finish the race. That’s my favorite part of the course.”

In beating GDS, putting five runners in the top 15, Sidwell demonstrated they’ll be a force in D.C. running for a while. Only one scoring runner, Sam Blazes, is due to graduate in the spring.

“It’s exciting because we have such a young team and we know there’s even more we can do,” Mattoo said.

The Montgomery County Cross Country Championships were going to be lonely for Rohann Asfaw, so for a half mile, he relished the crowd.

He hung back early on, content to run the collective pace and eat up some ground on the 5k course at Bohrer Park in Gaithersburg.

[button-red url=”http://www.mocorunning.com/meet.php?meet_id=3567″ target=”_self” position=”left”] Results [/button-red]”I wanted to stay behind them to make sure I had a controlled first mile,”he said. “I took off after 800 (meters). It’s really hard to run fast by yourself, but honestly, I just pretended like someone was ahead of me and they were pulling away.”

His 15:34 was a major PR, and coach Davy Rodgers said Asfaw’s very approach to the sport helped him when there was nothing but the breeze, and 15 seconds between him and Northwood’s Michael Abebe.

“He’s very good that he doesn’t take his competition lightly, so a lot of his training, he’s thinking about being ahead of the guys he’s racing. It’s his mental approach to all of his running.

“You’re either a front runner or a stretch runner and not a lot of people are comfortable running with a lead. He’s just a natural front runner.”

Behind him and Abebe, Colin Sybing started off scoring for T.S. Wootton in third place in 15:55, and he was joined by Cliff Tilley (sixth in 16:02) and Jacob Rushkoff (ninth in 16:12) in the top 10 to lead Wootton to its first county championship.

The meet has no bearing on the Maryland regional meets, set for next Thursday to determine bids for the Nov. 14 state meet, but it gathers all schools in the county for a single-division race for bragging rights.

The trio of Wootton seniors at the head of the race was joined by freshman John Riker, who finished 21st in 16:44 and junior Ben Shaprio, 34th in 16:55, to total 73 points, ahead of Bethesda-Chevy Chase’s 94 and Winston Churchill’s 108.

Wootton coach Kellie Redmond said this year’s team has fallen into consistency that not only allows her to see their improvement race-to-race, but had keep an even keel throughout the season.

“We’ve been in situations where we have good, quality teams and we’ve gotten ourselves into a problem by pumping things up too much,” she said. “That ultimately has hurt us. Now we’re not shooting for anything out of control, just running how we practice. There’s no up-and-down every week. That can get exhausting.”

In fourth overall, Northwest’s Branson Oduor, in just his first year of running, broke 16 minutes, running 15:58, a nine-second PR.

Heading into his senior year, Oduor wanted to “have a little fun” and joined the cross country team after sticking to pickup soccer and basketball games.

Though he’s found he has the wheels to compete, he’s still getting a hang of strategy.

“I was trying stay with Wootton’s number one guy (Sybing),” he said. “Our number two was staying with their number two. Colin  stayed behind me and when he caught up and went, I couldn’t catch up to him. I didn’t have time to react and when I tried to chase him down at the finish I ran out of energy.”

The girls race was another step in Tom Martin’s plan for the Walter Johnson team, though he wasn’t sure early on in the season if he had to change the blueprints. His Wildcats repeated as county champions, scoring 48 points to Bethesda-Chevy Chase’s 80, with six runners in the top 20, including sophomore Abbey Green and senior Emily Murphy, who went 1-2. Green’s 18:04 was a meet record.

“When the season started, this is what I envisioned for this day, but we had a lot of bumps and I wondered if it was a little unrealistic, but they surprised even me today,” he said.

Katriane Kirsch‘s 12th place finish was emblematic. Despite missing half of the base-building season, she has clawed her way up to being the third finisher for the team.

“That’s just will,” he said. “She’s doing that on a lot less training than the other girls. She’s a very strong willed young lady.”

Rival Bethesda-Chevy Chase had lost three-time county champion Nora McUmber to graduation, but reloaded with freshman Virginia Brown, who finished fourth in 18:45.

Green and Murphy shared the lead early on with Paint Branch’s Bethlehem Taye, who ultimately finished third in 18:23.

Taye, who won the 3200 meter run in the prior outdoor track season, is still adjusting to her newfound distance prowess and nothing depicted the new world she’s living in better than trying to compare her last finishing time and place at the county championship.

“Well, I don’t remember what place I was in last year, so…” she said, trailing off. She tired to use the Walter Johnson duo as a pacing guide because she’s still adjusting to running fast off the track, before they left her behind in the second mile.

“Once you let a gap form, it’s hard to close it,” she said. “After a while I wasn’t seeing it get any smaller, but I didn’t give up. I just set new goals.”

Her race plan wasn’t the only contingency at the race.

The meet was rescheduled because of a conflict on its original Saturday, three days prior, but that ultimately worked in several runners’ favor. Otherwise, they’d have come straight from taking the ACT college admissions test. WJ senior Jasmine Garrett was one such beneficiary.

“I couldn’t imagine coming from my last chance to take the test before applying to colleges and then having to race my last county meet,” she said. “And my proctor was late getting things started.”

The Georgetown Prep Classic gave plenty of cross country teams a change of scenery.

A collection of local and out-of-town teams that rarely, if ever, compete against each other made the race unpredictable, because few runners know their competitors’ tendencies.

[button-red url=”http://www.runhigh.com/2015RESULTS/R101715DA.html” target=”_self” position=”left”] Results [/button-red]”It was stress-free, but nobody felt prepared because you don’t know anyone next to you,” said senior Molly Kennedy, who won the unseeded race. Kennedy’s Riverview team traveled from Oakmont, Pa. and found a course that was more hospitable than they are accustomed to in suburban Pittsburgh.

“It was actually kind of fun,” she said. “I liked that it wasn’t as hard as the courses we do. The hills were shorter. It was easy, until the third mile.”

The Georgetown Prep course, through its campus and around its hilly golf course in Rockville, is generally regarded as one of the more difficult courses in the D.C. area. That’s the main reason Tom Martin brought the Walter Johnson team, where they put together a solid victory over National Cathedral School, putting four finishers in the top 10 of the seeded race.

“After this, they won’t be as worried about Hereford,” he cracked, referring to the Maryland state meet course. “We still have a lot of work to do bringing our 3-4-5 closer to Abbey (Green) and Emily (Murphy), then we’ll feel pretty good about the state meet.

“They’ve had races were they can worry about their individual times, but a meet like this gets them thinking about racing like a team. That’s what we’re focused on the next few weeks.”

Walter Johnson is the two-time defending state 4A champions, and they’ll race rival Bethesda-Chevy Chase next weekend at the Montgomery County Championships.

NCS sophomore Page Lester pulled away from Green in the last half mile to win 18:58 to 19:16. The two hadn’t raced before.

“If this were for a championship meet like counties or states, I’d want to know more about the girls I was racing against, but for an invitational it was fun,” Green said.

WJ senior  Murphy lost one of her spikes a mile into the race and rather than try to put it back on, she kicked it to a spectating teammate and stuck with her sock for traction. She finished third in 19:24.

“I don’t know how heels are going feel at Homecoming tonight,” she said.

Lester figured the race would be another in a series with her friend and rival, Sidwell’s Taylor Knibb, but only a smattering of Sidwell’s girls raced. The two are triathlon training partners who recently ended their three-sport season.

Seeded boys race winner Dalton Hengst, a sophomore from McDonogh, expected to see Good Counsel senior Jack Wavering on the line and was looking to take a crack at him with a fast first mile. Though the Falcons did not end up racing, Hengst went for it anyway, gapping the field on the first loop. Anthony Belfatto, a senior from St. Joseph’s of Buffalo, N.Y. worked his way up and caught him halfway though and took the lead a few times in the second loop, but Hengst put a move on him in sight of the finish line and held on for a 16:28-16:30 edge. In third, Loyola senior Kenny Rowe led a pair of teammates into the top six, which gave them a solid start in scoring over Mount Saint Joseph, 67-91.

Centennial claimed the unseeded boys’race with 91 points over DeMatha’s 142. Another visitor, Kyle Ortiz from Warminster, Pa’s Archbishop Wood, took the individual title in 17:19.

“We usually take a trip to Boston, but that meet filled up so we came down here,” he said.

Four seconds behind him, Riverview sophomore Ben Barnes held off a late charge from the Reservoir duo of sophomore Kai Muniz and junior Will Christian.

“I live for the last 400,” Barnes said. “This is my first season of cross country, so I have to stick to what I know. That means I’m getting through the courses so I have a chance to kick at the end.”