With a young team already realizing success, St. John’s figures to be a force in D.C., though Gonzaga wasn’t ready to concede the boys’ title just yet. The girls, on the other hand, avenged a state meet loss in 2018 to Woodrow Wilson. Cullen Capuano ran away for the boys’ win, but Georgetown Visitation sophomore kicked away from St. John’s freshman Meredith Gotzman for the girls’ title.
See all the post-season picks for All-RunWashington Maryland Northern Virginia
I’ve begun moving our photos from cross country races (there are a few college and open races in there too) and road races to a SmugMug page – you can see them here. You can also read all of this season’s cross country coverage here.
Some people spend years training to qualify for the Olympic Marathon Trials, but George Washington alumna Megan Hogan did it twice before she ever got to run a marathon.
But eight years after she left D.C. to embark on a brief professional running career, Hogan finally ran a marathon, finishing Boston in 2:42:00 to qualify for the Trials for the third time. It followed a “pretty conservative” training cycle, and she is now eager to begin training for the trials and devote more of her focus to marathon training, in hopes of making it to the race without injury for the first time. She made the 2012 Trials with a 10k time qualifier and the 2016 Trials with a half marathon time.
The Ballston Spa, N.Y. native still maintains a relaxed approach to her running and nutrition, openly admitting that she sometimes misses training runs because of work deadlines she faces as an interior designer and regularly indulges in a glass of wine.
If David Sullivan meets someone and tells them he’s a runner, they invariably ask him if he does marathons.
He blanches.
“To them it’s like nothing else exists,” he said. “But I get it.”
Not so for Sullivan and the members of his Athletics East Track Club who will race at the USATF National Club Cross Country Championships this Saturday at Lehigh University.
Of the 16 masters runners who will compete for the club’s teams, 14 are D.C.-area locals, and Sullivan, of Kingstowne, hopes to keep giving runners over 40 a life beyond the marathon grind.
He found West Springfield resident Bob Briggs at Burke Lake one weekend earlier this year, during the club’s weekly Saturday run.
“David came up to me and said, ‘Hey, you look like a pretty fast old guy – want to run with us?'” Briggs said. Briggs is 62 and shooting for a sub-3 at the Houston Marathon in January. Soon enough, Briggs became a member of Athletics East, which Sullivan managed and coached while living in his native Boston, then revived in 2018.
Sam Affolder was hurting in the third mile of Nike Cross Nationals last December.
After leading Loudoun Valley throughout the year in defense of its 2017 first-ever national title, things were looking grim for the senior. Most runners behind him saw him as a target to pass, but Carlos Shultz saw him and knew that’s where he needed to be.
“I saw Sam up there, and I knew if he was falling off, I couldn’t be ‘back there,'” he said.
It had been a while since Bethany Graham had run down the long stretch that leads to the Virginia state meet finish line at Great Meadow. Three years in fact, since she had made it through a cross country season unscathed. In that time, John Champe high school grew to 6A from 4A, and when the senior finished first with a 34-second margin of victory over Ocean Lakes sophomore Aniya Mosley running 17:42, she nearly led the Knights to a team title in the state’s largest division.
Her own race held true to her formula all season – go out fast and hold on. Within seven minutes, she was alone.
“The last mile was pretty difficult, but I managed to finish strong,” she said. “I was pretty lucky all season to stay healthy.”
But unfortunately for Champe, the six of the top 11 finishers were running without their teams, meaning Lake Braddock’s top finisher Sophie Willis’s 12th place finish only counted as six points, cutting the advantage Graham offered. Lake Braddock put seven ahead of Champe’s fifth and edged the Knights by eight points.
“We didn’t even think we’d be on the podium,” Graham said. “We were going up against so many teams that been so good for so long. After we lost Mythri Madireddy to an injury, it encouraged the younger girls to step up, and they did.”
Ahead of the Virginia state championships, West Springfield coach Chris Pellegrini figured the race would essentially be a dual meet with Oakton.
In a dual meet, a 1-2-3 sweep can’t be beaten. While muti-team meets are a little more forgiving, seniors Sean Stuck, Sam Pritchard and Chris Weeks made the Spartans a tough act to follow. Stuck won the race overall, running the 5k course at Great Meadow in 15:21, the fastest time of the day. Second place Wesley Bond of Landstown and third place Bryce Lentz of Colgan didn’t have teams in the race, so Pritchard’s 15:50 and Weeks’ 15:53 counted as second and third for scoring purposes.
Buried back in 56th place last year, Walter Johnson’s Jenna Goldberg knew her state meet performance wasn’t what she felt was possible. But it wasn’t as much because of her then-recently-diagnosed anemia. It was her confidence.
“I definitely felt stronger, significantly better, but I’m just in a much better place mentally,” she said soon after winning the 2019 4A title in 17:50. “Every race this year gave me the opportunity to experiment with different racing styles and see how they worked. By the end, I proved that easing into the race was the best strategy for me.”
Two years ago, the D.C. state meet looked like the fertile mud of Kenilworth Park was growing something special. With sophomores sweeping the first three spots on the boys’ side, it was natural to ask what a race among Gavin McElhennon, Luke Tewalt and Cullen Capuano would look like with two more years of growth and experience.
In the end, Capuano ran alone in front from the very start to win, running 16:35 for what several coaches felt to be longer than 5k. McElhennon finished ninth, easing his way back into racing following a long injury while Tewalt, hobbled with tendinitis in his knee, watched from the sidelines, having suited up just for the DCXC Invitational.
The winning Washington Catholic Athletic Conference teams got on the board early, with Gonzaga senior Cullen Capuano and St. John’s freshman Meredith Gotzman earning runaway individual victories at Bull Run Regional Park. Their team each won their third consecutive conference titles.
Capuano wasted no time building a lead, win a two-second margin by the race’s first turn. He ran ahead the entire race and won in 16:09.
With a dry course and a solid set of races, Richard Montgomery senior Garrett Suhr went out, gunning for the course record at Bohrer Park. In the attempt, he nearly lost the Montgomery County Championships. Had he been more patient, like Walter Johnson senior Jenna Goldberg, he might have had both.
A little more than two miles into the race, after taking a long, sweeping turn, Suhr looked back and saw three guys, Northwood’s Ayalew Fantaw and Henok Eshetu and Springbrook’s Surafel Mengist, right on his tail.
“When we crossed the (paved) paths, I’d hear the click-clacking from their spikes but they didn’t seem like they were that close,” Suhr said. “I thought I was way ahead.”
