Marc Hunter has been around runners long enough to know that even with the benefit of a meritocracy, seniority can often dominate in a team dynamic. That’s why he was surprised to hear then-freshman Ricky Fetterolf say something at a Loudoun Valley team meeting two years ago.
“It was gutsy, because we had a top-heavy team and it’s understandable for a freshman to just sit back and listen,” he said. “We had a top-heavy team, with a lot of seniors, but she voiced her opinion and I respected that about her. So did a lot of the girls.”
Fetterolf didn’t even remember what she had to say. What was more important to her was letting the rest of the team know she would have things to say, albeit somewhat sparingly. She wanted her hands on the wheel as the team moved ahead.
“I don’t talk that much, but if it’s something I value, I will speak up about it,” she said. “I’d rather lead by example.”
Gavin McElhennon got good in a hurry his second year of cross country running. With any luck, he can do it again.
Unable to run for most of the spring thanks to a groin injury, McElhennon finally relented as the school year ended, knowing that rushing to get back on the track wouldn’t win him anything except frustration as the goalposts for his return moved away every time he started up.
“I was hurting every time I ran,” he said. “I’d take time off, do a lot of physical therapy and start up again, but every time, I’d start hurting after a few days.”
His attention turned to his senior year at Gonzaga, where he had been the Eagles’ top distance runner most of the prior two years. Finally, in July, he opted for platelet-rich plasma injections in his groin, hip and glute, and gave the procedure a month to work itself out. Now, with more than a month of pain-free training, he’s eyeing a late-season comeback, with hopes of his best finish yet at the Nike Cross Regionals Southeast meet, where he finished 57nd last fall.
Tight packs kept spectators guessing throughout the Glory Days Grill Invitational, as no runner took over the race until very late, with some top-five finishes in boys and girls races jumbling even in the last 200 meters.
Ultimately, Yorktown senior Albert Velikonja won his second invitational of the season and Centreville junior Camilla McKinstry won her first ever invitational.
The eternal struggle shook the Hasle household. Teenaged Kellen wanted to stay in bed, his mom wanted the exact opposite, the summer after he finished eighth grade.
He could have fruitlessly made the excuse that he was still living in Alaska Time years after the family moved to Virginia, but those pleas would have fallen on deaf ears.
Mrs. Hasle signed Kellen up for Loudoun Valley’s cross country team. What she thought would have gotten him some exercise initially gave him more of an appreciation for the outdoors.
“There’s this path called the nature trail, where a lot of the less dedicated runners would go,” he said. “I spent a lot of my freshman year there.”
Things were going quite well for Ava Gordon during her freshman year at Rock Ridge High School. She was the top freshman in Virginia’s 5A division, finishing fourth at the state meet and 15th at Nike Cross Southeast. She liked her coach and her teammates and running around Ashburn.
The problem was, other people were coming to like Ashburn, too. The population growth was forcing the Loudoun County School District to expand, adding Independence High School. That meant students eastern Loudoun County would be redistributed among Rock Ridge, Independence and Briar Woods. At the same time, her family decided it was time for Ava’s grandmother to move in, and that would mean needing more room of their own. So the Gordons headed west, and Ava and her older sister Alex.
“It was something we had been talking about doing for a while, but the timing wasn’t right,” Dan Gordon said. “We were going to have Alex at Rock Ridge, Ava was going to be moved to Briar Woods. We just wanted to reset everything, have everyone at the same school, everyone in the house and finally make that move.”
Over a 5k, Zoe Edelman barely gets warmed up.
Thanks because the Washington Latin junior got her real start in racing doing half marathons. In 2016, at age 12, she ran the Rock ‘n’ Roll D.C. Half Marathon in just over two hours with her father, Josh.
What’s more, she ran it with a broken wrist, with a cast on her arm.
When he tore onto the track at Kenilworth Park while finishing the DCXC Invitational, Luke Tewalt wasn’t upset to be counted third among seniors. Nearing the finish line as the clock turned over into the 15:30s, he knew he was going to PR no matter what (he ran 15:35), and that was unthinkable a few weeks before.
On his second set of one of his favorite workouts as Washington Latin Public Charter School’s season got started, he felt something go wrong in his right glute.
“It was a twinge, but I felt like I could run through it,” he said. “A little while later, I couldn’t move without it hurting.”
She already went through the trouble of doing the training. Coming to the meet. Warming up.
As long as she’s there, Elise Abbe might as well run really, really hard.
It took her the better part of three cross country seasons, but she figured out that putting herself out there in a race wasn’t going to kill her.
“A lot of people are scared to race, that it’s going to hurt,” she said. “I go into my races excited that I have a chance to push myself, so I want to find out how fast I can go.”
Colin McCauley feels like he could outkick most runners. Bryce Lentz knows he can’t. The two sped off at the Octoberfest Invitational, just knowing that at some point Lentz would have to run McCauley’s legs off if he had a chance of winning.
Under overcast skies, they started fast and pulled clear of third place finisher David Barron of Westfield in the first few minutes.
There’s apparently a second layer to astrology that goes beyond newspaper horoscopes. According to my coworker, what time of day you were born adds a tint of good or bad fortune. For runners at the DCXC Invitational, what time of day they started their race made all the difference.
That’s because cloud cover alternated from race to race, providing much-needed relief from heat that reached the upper 80s throughout the afternoon, while also surprising some runners when they got on the starting line, thinking the hot part of the day was behind them. Those varying conditions just hammered home that the races, divided among graduating class, existed separately of each other. The format also gives runners a chance to race against their peers only, offering each class a chance in the spotlight. That did some favors for the seniors, whose races had the most comfortable temperatures irrespective of cloud cover.
