Fort Dupont Park offered a cross country course that is challenging, full of character and surprise for any spectators trying to follow the race through the winding trails.

But if the D.C. cross country championship wanted to grow in its fourth year, it was going to need a new home. After three years, spectator-friendly Kenilworth Park had proved itself as host of the DCXC Invitational and thus, the “state” meet had a new course, this time measured out to a full 5,000 meters. With it came some new teams who made themselves at home.

Gonzaga, which had held many of its top runners out of previous state meets, came back and won the boys’ team title, lead by Harry Monroe and John Colucci finishing first and second. Will McCann (sixth), John Travis (eighth) and David Giannini (14th); Amal Mattoo (fifth) and Julian Dixon (seventh) led Sidwell into second place. Gonzaga also swept the top five places in the junior varsity race.

Monroe and Colucci ran together ahead of the pack until about halfway, when Monroe opened up a gap and went on to win in 16:19. Colucci finished 30 seconds back.

“We run our workouts together, so we’re used to starting out our races together,” he said. “After I got ahead of him, it felt a little weird because I’m not used to running on my own. I checked behind me to see how close I was to john; imagined someone running ahead of me to keep me focused.”

The pair finished first and second on the rugged new Lake Fairfax course at the Washington Catholic Area Conference championships, where Gonzaga took second to Good Counsel.

Though Kenilworth Park was flat and fast and he came out on top of what is finally a collection of the district’s best runners, Monroe thinks back to his fourth place finish at the Glory Days Invitational a month prior as his defining race so far this year.

“I was closer to Rohann (Asfaw, of Maryland’s Richard Montgomery) than I ever expected,” he said. The target on Asfaw’s back comes from his finish at Nike Cross Southeast that was one place away from qualifying for the national meet. “I showed I could run when the course was muddy, and I am looking forward to trying to race him again (in three weeks).”

The Georgetown Day School duo of Josh Shelton and Jackson Todd remembered that race. Shelton went down in the first minute of the race. A half mile in, Todd, in the midst of a comeback from an IT band injury, saw his teammate run by “with a look of fury in his eyes.”

Though he finished the race, Shelton limped away from the finish line. Todd, too, was out for a few weeks before both returned for last weekend’s MAC championship, when Shelton and Todd finished third and seventh. They both improved to finish third (Shelton, in 16:54) and fourth (Todd, in 17:15).

“I’m disappointed, I wanted to do a lot my senior season, I had a lot of races to look forward to,” Todd said. “Being able to come back at race here, though, is pretty great. We just kept our cool early on and ran strong second halves of the race.”

Todd raced the Fort Dupont course last year in the rain but felt afterward like he had been put through a wringer.

“My hips and IT bands felt awful the next day,” he said. “It’s a cool place to run, but those trails are so narrow and half of it is broken up concrete…this is just a much better place to have a championship race. You just worry about running fast.”

And Todd ran almost 20 seconds faster for fourth, coming off of an injury, than he did for second last year.

On the girls’ side, Page Lester made her debut at this race after the National Cathedral School sat out during her freshman and sophomore years.

She and Georgetown Visitation freshman Megan Lynch jumped clear of the pack early on.

“I put in a few moves in the first loop to see how she’d respond and she stayed on me,” Lester said.

After a mile and a half, Lester started pushing the pace consistently and shook free of Lynch and went on the win in 18:12, a minute ahead of Lynch, the same order as a week prior at the ISL championships. Lester thinks she has a new racing strategy.

“I just relax early on and not try to go out too hard,” she said. “It turns out it’s a lot more fun that having people pass you because you killed yourself in the start of the race. I was doing that for a long time.”

That’s how she’s treated her season, after taking part of August and all of September off of running while she recovered from a stress reaction. And while being injured wasn’t great, it gave her a break between triathlon season and cross country.

“Usually just go from one right into another and by the time championship season starts, I’m getting tired of it,” she said. “Now I feel ready for more.”

Lynch left soon after her race, but GVS coach Kevin Hughes said that despite being primarily a lacrosse and basketball player, she has adapted well to cross country.

“She can run all day long,” he said. “I knew she had some endurance from those other sports, but not like this. She’s been a great leader for us this season.”

Lynch was followed by Michaela Kirvan and Michelle Horner in fourth and fifth places, Lauren Cormier in 17th and Brennan Dunne in 20th to win the team title over Wilson, which was led by Zakyrah Haynie and Arrington Peterson in sixth and seventh.

Cady Hyde, a St. Johns freshman, finished third in 19:28, a week after winning the WCAC individual title.

“I knew Page and Megan would go out hard, so I just wanted to hold back and work the second half and see if I could catch Megan,” she said. “I was close, I think I was about six seconds behind her at one point, but she pulled away.”

 

 

Rohann Asfaw and Abbey Green both sewed up their individual Montgomery County championships with plenty of room to spare last year, and there was no indication anyone else racing would have made up much ground, but for a few miles on Saturday, Adam Nakasaka made things interesting.

The Bethesda-Chevy Chase junior hung on Asfaw’s heels for two miles, before falling off pace and eventually being passed by Poolesville junior Ryan Lockett who put seven seconds on Nakasaka to finish second in 15:53 on Gaithersburg’s Bohrer Park course.

“I didn’t think I could beat Rohann, but I thought top two wouldn’t be too bad,” Nakasaka said. “I stayed a little behind him to get out of the wind, but I don’t think that helped all that much.”

Nakasaka had little left for a kick to fend off Lockett, but despite falling to third, he wasn’t disappointed.

“I might have gotten second if I had gone a little slower, but I’m glad I went for it,” he said. “I wanted a gutsy race. I’m not upset.”

Though Asfaw was trying for Chase Weaverling‘s 15:24 course record from 2012, he settled for just running a second faster than his own winning time from 2015 — 15:33. The culprit was likely having trained through the race.

“Everything is focused on Nike Cross Nationals and regionals,” Asfaw said.

The Richmond Montgomery senior was one spot from the national meet last fall. His miss in his record attempt was bound to come up later in the weekend, when he headed to the University of Virginia — where Weaverling is a junior — for a recruiting trip.

Further back in the pack, as dominant as Asfaw’s lead was in the third mile, the Northwest Jaguars were running in a formidable set of small packs, with runners finishing in 13th, 14th, 17th, 19th and 24th places to score a 50 point win over Bethesda-Chevy Chase with 87 points.

Northwest coach Robert Youngblood told his team to let Asfaw, along with Nakaska and B-CC teammate Josh Fry, go on ahead.

“We don’t have that dominant front runner,” Youngblood said. “I told them we could win another way. We have these packs of two and their jobs are to go after each team’s second runner, their third runner. If we do that, and close up our time gaps, we could have a chance.

Let the elite runners go out there and we could win it with a team effort.”

Jaguars’ anonymous gray uniforms reflected that approach. Their success this year is the culmination of Youngblood’s four-plus years with the team, which sported five seniors among the six varsity finishers. Northwest also laid claim to first place in both junior varsity races and three of the top four of the upperclass junior varsity race.

On the girls’ side, Walter Johnson won its third straight county title and Green improved on her course record by running 17:46 to win by almost 50 seconds over Pain Branch junior Yasmine Kass, who in turn had a four-second lead over Poolesville sophomore Nandini Satsangi.

“When I’m out there by myself, I just try to pretend there’s someone ahead of me,” Green said. “Anything to keep me focused. I didn’t have any real time goal in mind because I knew it would be weird with all the wind, but I did want to be faster than last year because I just missed 18 minutes (when she ran 18:04).”

WJ coach Tom Martin was encouraged by senior Katriane Kirsch‘s eighth place finish in spite of asthma problems that beat her up in the second half of the race.

“She powered through it, and it’s good to see your team respond to adversity,” he said. “That’s something we can fix. They’re training pretty hard right now so I didn’t expect them to be sharp, but I’m happy with how we did and are in a good place heading into regionals (Nov. 3).

WJ had a solid lead over T.S. Wootton, 54 points to 109, with Bethesda-Chevy Chase in third with 121.

There was big news spreading at the DCXC Invitational, after the elementary school races. Two girls were eager to share it.

“I got second place!”

That wasn’t even the big news.

From her friend: “I got ice cream!”

Both were treated with equal praise by coaches and teammates and that, in large part, speaks to the promise lying ahead for young cross country runners.

In a sport where participants are definitively ranked — someone is first and someone is last — the big challenge for coaches is to keep kids in the sport, developing their skills but staying patient and keeping runners engaged.

Dereck Barnes has been coaching the Fairfax Police Youth Club for three years, after his daughters noticed of how much he liked to run and asked to do it himself. And soon, he had been recruited to coach. He was on the cross country team at Methodist College in North Carolina, so he came in with a lot of experience, but he still needed to refine it.

“I knew the art of running, but I didn’t know the science,” he said. “Getting a coaching certification helped me a lot.”

More than at any other level, a youth coach’s role is to hold the athlete back.

“The magic is encouraging, them, explaining why we do the workouts,” he said. “We don’t do any type of intensity until they hit puberty. We’ll run up some hills, but we won’t go any anaerobic work.”

Three times a week, FPYC practices in some Fairfax County Park where the runners can stay on grass.

“We teach them to run by feel, learn the sport, respect the sport,” Barnes said. “There’s plenty of time for them to work on speed. We just want them to enjoy running.”

As a child in Fayetteville, N.C. Barnes ran Junior Olympic track events and was impressed by the levels of organization to the sport and the chance to run against and meet other athletes from across the state, region and country.

“Back then, soccer was pretty disorganized, too,” he said. “It’s gotten its act together and that’s why it’s so popular. If track can get to that point, we’ll draw people in.”

His older daughter, Aiko, is a fan of long distances — she enjoyed running the Junior Olympic 3,000 meters in track and longer cross country races. Even so, she’s still a sucker for flash.

“I was inspired by Usain Bolt,” she said. “But I like to run longer. I try to pace myself when I run.”

She sounds decidedly mature in telling that she sells her friends on running by saying “it’s fun and good for your health.”

At DCXC, she and her sister Aoi got a kick out of making funny faces in the New Balance photo booth.

As for Aoi, “I love to compete,” she said.

In D.C,’s Tenleytown neighborhood, Janney Elementary School has had a team for three years, now co-coached by Jenny O’Connor. Though she was a soccer player in her youth, she has run road races, including the Boston Marathon, and her fellow coaches are triathletes.

There’s a little more pressure because with a volunteer coaching staff, managing athletes’ safety forces coaches to make cuts to keep the team manageable.

“Every year there are more kids trying out,” she said. “We hate cutting kids, but we have to keep them safe.”

Her son, Seamus, took up running after seeing how much his parents enjoyed it.

“I manage running with my soccer practices,” he said. “I haven’t gotten tired of it yet.”

Kathryn McKinney has been coaching at Oyster-Adams Bilingual School in Woodley Park for five years. Like the Janney coaches, she’s a volunteer. And even though her athletes have finished running, she’s sticking around to see two former runners, now freshmen at Wilson High School, race later in the day.

“I hope they wind up with a life-long love of running,” she said. “We try to keep the program competitive but fun.”

One way she does that is by keeping plenty of records by which kids can gauge their improvement. The one-mile uphill run in the zoo is a staple of the program, and kids love to look back and see how they did in different “zoo miles.”

“We have kids coming in with all different kinds of experience,” she said. “Some of them have parents who run. Some of them have never played a competitive sport before.”

Vincent Kamani is one of them. Now an eighth grader, he joined the team last year after a lot of soul searching.

“I thought about if there was an apocalypse, I’d better be able to run,” he said. “It seemed like the best sport to get into shape.”

He was the top finishers on the Oyster-Adams team, taking eighth place at DCXC.

Kamani had a rough first year adjusting to that level of exercise, but after training trough the hot 2016 summer, he felt something click.

“Now I can run a lot faster than I thought I could,” he said. “Now I don’t run because I want to be okay in an apocalypse, now I just don’t want to lose.”

McKinney tries to keep the workload, as light as it is, from intimidating her athletes.

“We’ll run a mile to Rock Creek Park and a mile back, so everyone who comes to practice does at least two miles, and they don’t even notice it,” she said. “I’ll have them to scavenger hunts, things that take their mind off of the running.”

And it’s been working. For a school of roughly 170 people, the team sports 50 runners.

“We have almost a third of the students in the school on the team,” McKinney said. “That means they’re having fun and want to keep running. That’s good feedback to have.”

Her son, Alexander Walch, runs on the team. He prefers the 800 meters, so when he starts high school he may just opt for track, but even so, cross country has been teaching him lessons.

“I’m a lot better than I used to be,” he said. “I found out I like competing, and I didn’t used to like competing. Back when I played soccer, I would be the kid doing cartwheels on the field.”

Kamani said he can transfer the mental focus he has developed from running to anything else in his life.

“It’s all about where is your mental state,” he said. “Every race is a question of if you really want ‘it’ and how serious you are about it.”

Whether you’re first or fifteenth on the cross country team, you run. Hard.

“Every single day I see everyone run until their lungs are on fire,” said Fernanda Yepez–Lopez, a senior at Walter Johnson, in Bethesda.

It doesn’t matter that she hasn’t been one of the top seven scoring members of the Wildcats team, which will be shooting for its fourth consecutive Maryland 4A title this fall. Yepez-Lopez and her teammates attend daily practices, do strenuous workouts several times each week and wear the same uniform.

A successful team needs that, and breeds that. More personalities means more fun in a sport where a lot of the conditioning is done at a conversational pace and friendships can develop over the course of all the miles. Who knows where hidden talent lies the first time a runner stands on the starting line, but more importantly, who knows what they will learn about themselves and their friends in the dayin, day-out life of a cross country runner.

Jacqueline Zito, who is starting her junior year, said that at another school she might be among the top seven runners on the team, and so would some of her friends.

“I don’t think we’d give (WJ) up for anything,” she said. “All the varsity girls are so supportive. And they’re so sweet; it’s not as though they are boastful. There’s a varsity and a JV team, but there’s a really cool family vibe going on.”

That means, like with older siblings, lessons come from more than just mom and dad, or in this case, coaches Tom Martin and Ashley St. Denis. And sometimes those lessons resonate more personally because they come from peers.

Victoria Pannullo remembered her first practice last year as a freshman. “We did the warm up and I was exhausted after that. Then we did a two-mile jog on the track. I was so tired. And it was incredibly hot. After that, I threw up. There was one girl, who I didn’t even know, and she came over to me and told me it was going to be alright and running will get easier.

“It was so miserable. I came home from that and said, ‘Do I even want to do cross country? That was so hard.’ But everything has been better since the first practice.”

One of sophomore Helena Abbott‘s favorite cross-country memories is the entire team getting together to talk and do core exercises in a big circle after a workout.

“Immediately, everyone looks out for each other once you join the team,” she said.

Encouragement from a teammate convinced Pannullo to give the team a chance. She has gained the perspective that “you’ll have good days and bad days of running. And they are both important.”

She now relies on hard workouts to give her confidence in races by telling herself, “You finished that really hard workout; you can finish this race.”

Even on hot and humid race days, “you get through it,” Zito said, and walk away “knowing that you can do it even though it looks so difficult at the time.”

Yepez-Lopez and Zito have also both found that running helps them balance the stress of high school.

“Running really helps me channel out all the negative vibes,” Yepez-Lopez said. Zito pointed out that, “High school is full of pressure and social status and phones, but when you’re out running, that just goes away.”

There still is some competition, because when time matters, running reveals itself to be a true meritocracy. The politics of playing time are null and void. Zito often finished races last season within seconds of two other teammates. At some races, the order in which they finished would determine who would compete at an upcoming invitational. They raced hard against each other, but they also encouraged each other through the race and remained close friends regardless of their finishing order. Zito remembered a race when she thought she could not “move a step farther” and felt so grateful to hear her teammate’s voice beside her saying, “‘come on, we’ve got this.'”

Some girls on the team are striving for one of the top seven spots. For many others, it’s not realistic, at least this year.

Walter said, “the only person I’m racing against is myself and I’m pretty sure I can beat me.” She notes that many girls join the team “just for the love of running.” Abbott agreed that many of the girls on the team are motivated to run because “we really like the sport.” But they still set goals and run hard to attain them.

“We always go out and give it 110 percent,” Abbott said.

It means something when Yepez-Lopez sees every runner “putting (herself) on the line to achieve something.”

“Every time we run, I see everyone is struggling,” she said. “Everyone is pushing themselves. If you are not pushing yourself to the extent that everyone else is, you’re letting them down.”

Through the pain, the girls have fun and become close friends. “Even when we’re all tired, we still have enough energy to laugh together,” Yepez-Lopez said.

The success of Walter Johnson’s top runners is a source of pride and motivation for the entire team. Walter said that training with the top seven runners has inspired others on the team to believe that if “they work as hard they can be just as successful.”

“Even though it isn’t the JV team winning all the titles, we still feel a sense of pride since it’s still our runners going out there and winning. … I know it’s impacted me in this way.”

Pannullo said that the whole team contributes to the success of the fastest girls because, “Everyone on the team is trying to push the person in front of them to run faster.” And Zito agreed that, at the end of the season, it feels like “we all did it together.”

In an act that Walter described as “an amazing display of sportsmanship,” the two runners who consistently finished right behind the top seven girls last season and just missed qualifying to run at the regional meet organized the team to make posters for those racing at regionals. One of the girls who organized that effort, Emma Pannullo, was disappointed that she was not racing herself but still traveled to the race to cheer on the team.

Each of these girls plans to continue running after they leave Walter Johnson. Zito said that running helps her feel “stronger mentally and physically.” She hopes, even, that she can replicate “the wonderful bonds” forged with her teammates on the Walter Johnson cross-country team.

Rohann Asfaw put to rest one of the great debates from the Summer Olympics: Diving doesn’t make a difference.

Locked in a struggle for first place at the Glory Days Invitational, Richard Montgomery’s Asfaw heaved himself toward the finish line at the end of a muddy climb in hopes of edging out Alec Schrank. But unlike Shaune Miller beating Allyson Felix for the 400 meter gold, Asfaw was coming from behind, and his lunge couldn’t match the push Schrank’s feet had on the slippery ground. The pair crossed the line at 16:04, but Schrank kept the meet’s individual title in the Millbrook family. Tyler Cox-Philyaw, now at William and Mary, won last year’s race.

“I thought it would work,” Asfaw said. “It had to have been better that the ground, I wasn’t getting any traction.”

The boys’ race was a return to the true meaning of cross country after many teams spent the last two weekends racing flat, fast and in one case, short, courses at the DCXC (3.07 miles) and Great American invitationals. Finish in front of someone else — that’s all that matters.

Schrank wanted no part of the lead in the first two miles, he just wanted to save as much as he could for the end. Asfaw thought there was a chance for a fast race until a first mile split north of 5:00 changed his mind for him.

After three miles running largely neck and neck, the pair split to the grassier edges of the course torn up by eight races and a day’s worth of rain, wrapped around a long u-turn and saw no solid ground in the last 50 meters.

“I looked at that mud and I realized that could be my downfall,” Schrank said. “One bad step could be the difference between winning and coming in 20th.”

The pair had a little cushion, but not much, just three seconds on George Marshall’s Patrick Lynch. Lynch had run just seven second faster for a flat, dry 3-mile course earlier in the week, so the rebound was both surprising and welcome.

“This was what I needed,” he said. “I’ve had a season of pretty awful races, getting back from pneumonia. As a confidence booster, just racing people, being up there in the pack. It’s just about being tough.”

He had been beaten down by bad races as he tried to work his way back from illness, and saw the field pass him by last weekend at a fast Great American race in North Carolina.

“I’ve mentally collapsed in the middle mile the last few races, so staying strong today was important,” he said. “I almost wiped out coming down a hill, but I just kept following Rohann, he kept moving to the grassy parts wherever he could find them.”

Dulaney, last year’s Maryland 4A champion, notched its third straight win, five points ahead of Gonzaga, which edged WCAC rival Good Counsel by 10. Matt Owens lead Dulaney in ninth.

The girls’ race was less tense, after Heather Holt (18:03) ran away with a 33-second lead over Page Lester, who was running her first race race, at the end of her first week back running, after an early August stress reaction took her out of her running shoes for seven weeks.

“I enjoyed it,” Lester said. “I felt like my legs were still strong even though I wasn’t running.”

She simply eliminated running from the triathlon training she does year-round, and eased in and listened to National Cathedral School coach Jim Ehrenraft‘s rationale that simply finishing the race would be a victory. She took it out a little slower than she has in the past.

“I go out super fast, but after 800 meters I’m a little worn out,” she said. “Taking it easy worked — I felt a lot better than I usually do, but I don’t have my kick back, yet.”

Holt just wanted to get through the race on her feet, and with a healthy margin had the luxury of taking a little more care in her steps.

“The mud made it easy to remember to pick my feet up,” she said.

Noel Palmer, a senior from Liberty Christian Academy made the trip up from Lynchburg and finished third, all while enjoying cool weather.

“Today showed me I need to do a little more work on the hills,” she said. “They’re a weakness but I can make them a strength by the end of the season.”

Georgetown Visitation School freshman Megan Lynch tried to chase Holt early, and paid for it. She wound up in fifth, behind Winston Churchill senior Julia Reicin, Maryland’s first finisher.

“I was a little nervous about all the mud,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve had a hilly course like this before, either.”

She steeled herself mentally after the first mile and sat back in the second mile before charging in the third.

“I wasn’t really sure where the finish line was,” she said. “I feel like today taught me a lot of the things I see in cross country courses while I get used to the sport.”

Lake Braddock’s cancelled trip to the Disney Cross Country Classic in Orlando meant more of the team would be racing at Glory Days than earlier planned, and they handily won over Marshall. Taylor Kitchen and Sarah Daniels paced the Bruins in seventh and eighth place.  Northern High School from Calvert County, Md. was third.

It started by accident, but before every race, Aaron Liiva makes sure he dabs a little bit of marinara sauce on his spikes.

He doesn’t use any particular type of sauce — although the Blake senior mentioned he’s partial to Costco’s Kirkland Signature brand. Usually, he just makes a point to save some of the sauce from his pre-race spaghetti.

It began earlier this year when Liiva spilled marinara sauce all over his uniform right before a race. But that day, he ran a 40-second PR. Since then, he’s added the ritual to his long list of pre-race routines, which also include placing an oak leaf in his right sock and wearing the same bandana.

“I have a lot of pre-race rituals,” Liiva said, pointing to his bandana. “I started wearing the bandana, so I don’t want to not wear the bandana because it might be bad.”

The field at Saturday’s DCXC Invitational was full of traditions and superstitions, but food was a common theme.

Matthew Owens, a senior at Quince Orchard, said the team always goes to the same restaurant — Noodles & Company — before each race.

“We’ve been doing it for so many years. It was done before we came in, so we decided to continue it,” he said, adding that he usually gets the Wisconsin Mac & Cheese. “I’ve done well when I’ve had it.”

Owens’ teammate, Rene Mugabo, opts for 24 Chick-fil-A chicken nuggets.

“One time, my brother took me before county and I did really well, so I just kept eating it,” he explained.

Across Kenilworth Park, spectators could quickly tell which teams use music, huddles and team cheers to prepare to toe the start line.

For the last year, the Westfield boys have started each race the same way.

“We say, ‘Are you ready to get nasty?’ then we are like, ‘Yeah, we are!’ And we get a banana and throw it around,” said senior Colin Affterton, adding that they’ve dubbed “Cooking By The Book” — a rap remix of a song from a kids’ show — as the official team song.

Whether any of it helps them run faster is up for debate.

“We just have a lot of fun doing it,” he said.

The Blake girls have a similar ritual.

“We’ll scream, ‘Who are we?’ and the answer is, ‘Blake XC!'” said Claire Jacobs, a junior.

Eric Bartley, also a junior at Blake, gets hyped up before every race by listening to “Our Song,” by Taylor Swift.

“It’s actually a great song,” he explained. “I get in that moment where I feel like I can run forever.”

On the flip side, Bartley’s teammate, Jack O’Grady, has his go-to playlist of hard metal.

“It’s really intense stuff,” said O’Grady, adding that he always listens to the same songs in the same order. “I have to be kind of angry to run fast.”

For others, the start line offers a brief moment of calm before the excitement of the race.

“We always circle up and have a pre-meet talk and then we’ll say a prayer before we start,” said Logan Ali, a sophomore from Hempfield Area High School in Greensburg, Pa.

“Our coach always says to close our eyes and pictures ourselves as the champions,” said Junho Kim-Lee, a senior at Sidwell. “That’s something our coach has always done. And I like how he does that. I think it really helps to take a moment to think about how you want to run.”

Kim-Lee recalled how the tradition helped him in the early days of his cross-country career.

“I remember at my first race as a freshman. My whole body would be shaking. Even the day before, I couldn’t think. My thoughts would be scrambled,” he said. “But now I’m a lot more confident at the start line. It just helps focus on how you want to run.”

And then there are the runners who stick to their tried-and-true rituals out of fear changing them could be detrimental.

“I always wear the same tshirt and shorts the day of the race and I always bring an extra pair of socks and change into them like 10 minutes before the race,” said Sidwell senior Jordan Chernof. “It worked out once and now I’m too scared to change it up.”

“First, I have to crack my [right] hip. I can run without doing it, but it’s just something that I feel like I have to do. I started doing it my junior year and that’s when I started getting good at this,” said Maya Jacobson, a senior at Quince Orchard. “I’m also convinced that if I don’t wear this bracelet, something really bad is going to happen. The one time I didn’t wear this bracelet I put myself in the slow heat of the mile of indoor track and I ran really slow.”

For some, they rely on mantras and quotes to get them to the finish.

“I always think of this quote that my mama taught me,” said Blake senior Andy Otero. “It doesn’t really apply to cross country. It applies to when you’re being chased by a bear. It’s ‘Run faster than your friend.'”

Ella Pearlman-Chang and Talia Lehrich, both freshmen at Woodrow Wilson, have only been on the team for a month, but they’re already thinking about establishing their own rituals for their high school cross-country careers. At Saturday’s race, they donned hair ribbons and matching temporary tattoos wrapped around their right arms.

“Our tradition is to do fun stuff before races,” Pearlman-Chang explained.

And then, of course, there are those whose only ritual is to not have any rituals.

“I don’t really believe in superstitions,” said Jason McFadden, a junior at Quince Orchard. “I don’t believe there’s anything you can do that’ll change the race other than train before. I don’t believe in those little charms. I found that tricking myself into thinking that these little things will make a difference kind of psychs me out and just makes me more nervous than I already am.”

A rapidly cooling evening primed Kenilworth Park for fast races at the DCXC Invitational, conditions that D.C.-area cross country runners have ached for all season. Heather Holt‘s 16:56 and senior Saurav Velleleth‘s 15:01 times on the 3.07-mile course were just the fastest of likely hundreds of personal records, even adjusting for the slightly short course.

 

Now in its third year, DCXC played host to the four-class varsity race structure that pitted runners against opponents from their graduating classes, and let nearly 1,400 runners compete in varsity-level races.

Races started at 11 and lasted until 6:30, with elementary school, middle school races combing with high school races to total 2,381 finishers, of whom 2,095 were high schoolers.

Spectators were treated to 17 different sprints to the finish line.  For the runners, the class races let them see how they compare to their peers. And coaches got a clearer picture of what what they have to work with, especially on boys’ teams, where most top sevens comprise upperclassmen and younger runners develop in JV and freshman races.

Chris Pellegrini saw a lot to like in his West Springfield boys, and not just Chris Weeks‘ runner-up finish in the freshman race. Three — Sam Pritchard, Gian Trujilo and Chris Lozano — finished together at 17:51.

“If they stick with it, we might have something pretty good in a few years,” he said. “They’re all learning what they can do and how close to empty they can get at the end of a race. If Weeks can get to three miles with basically nothing left, he’ll be able to kick into the finish, but he’s still finding that out for himself.”

The Walter Johnson girls’ junior class, led by second place Abbey Green, had Sadie Keller, Sophia Scobell and Janet Scott in sixth through eighth places. When combined with  Katrione Kirsch‘s runner up finish in the senior race, bodes well for the Wildcats, not just this year, when they will try to defend their Maryland 4A title, but next year, too.

Gonzaga and Wootton claimed to top overall team awards for boys and girls, respectively. 

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Freshman Girls

Rookie Megan Lynch, from Georgetown Visitation, stormed to a 16-second win over John Champe’s Bethany Graham, starting with a 5:38 first mile. Graham clawed her way back to within seven seconds at the two mile (Lynch was through in 11:49, Graham in 11:56) before Lynch reasserted her margin over the last mile.

“I just tried to do best,” she said. “This was my second 5k, so I’m still new at this.”

Lynch is a lacrosse and basketball player who picked up cross country for conditioning purposes.

“I was trying to chase her down, but she was too fast for me,” Graham said. “I expect that kind of competition at a race like this though. It was a great opportunity to see where I stood compared to other freshmen.”

Zoe Cachion, from Arlington’s Washington-Lee, snagged the last medal at 25th place.

“Someone tried to pass me but I knew we were getting to the end of the medals,” she said. “She wasn’t going to pass me.”

Though a freshman, Cachion is a seasoned runner, coming from a family of runners and having the opportunity to run with the W-L team as an eighth grader.

“Each time I run is a new experience and a chance to do better than last time,” she said.

Mikaela Vento is visiting D.C. with her Hempfield team from Greensburg, Pa. She was not optimistic during the team’s tour of the course on Friday.

“We thought it was going to be horrible, the sun was beating on us like crazy,” she said. “But when we got here, it was cool and much better.

“I sprinted like crazy and passed four people. My normal time is 32 minutes, but I just got 26-something,” she said, though the Western Pennsylvania courses tend to run a little slower than Kenilworth Park

Out coach has us  do a lot of hills and that really helped with this course because it’s really flat and made it a lot easier than what we’re trained for,” said Vento’s teammate Rebecca McFadden.

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Freshman Boys

Nicholas Karayianis and Chris Weeks raced a week prior to DCXC at the Adidas Cross Country Invitational, where Karayianis, of Maryland’s Winston Churchill, had a 12-second lead on Weeks. This time Weeks closed the gap, trailing by only one second, 16:37-16:38.

“I have a tendency to go out way too fast, but I realized how much I slow down,” Karayianis said. “Tuesday, I went out faster than anyone else and I fell apart, so I realized I’d better take it easier.”

By the middle of the race, he knew that was paying off, because he was in control.

Weeks was encouraged by the improvement he made in a week.

“I knew the last few days things were going to go pretty well,” he said.

Gonzaga’s Cullen Capuano benefited from his teammates’ experiences over the last two years racing here.

“They said to just keep a steady fast pace instead of trying to surge,” he said. “The uphills and downhills weren’t long enough to make any more there.”

Speaking of hills, William Gay, from Champe, still remembers how his quads and calves killed after the climb in mile three at Oatlands seven days earlier. Not so this week.

“I feel a lot better,” he said. “This was a chance to just run fast.”

Isaiah Luckey, of Woodbridge leaned into the punch that comes in the middle of a cross country race.

“It was good the first half, but my legs started burning in the second half,” he said.

Rather than take that cue to slow down and lick his wounds, Luckey sped up and ultimately destroyed his PR by roughly a minute.

“I had to go fast…I felt people catching up to me, ” he said. “Last time, I went out too fast. This time I let them go and chased people down.

“I love it, man.”

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Sophomore Girls

Ava Hassebrock finally got a race that satisfied her, running 18:12 for a 13 second margin. Though the Tuscarora sophomore has a frustrating start to her season, trying to improve on her freshman outing that saw her finish fifth at the Virginia 5A championship, she credited her mental toughness and attitude in propelling her to a win over Poolesville’s Nandini Satsangi, with whom she had dueled over the first two miles. The pair finished in the same order in the 2015 DCXC freshman race.

“When I had about 400 meters left, I felt like she was close, and I told myself I couldn’t let her pass me again,” she said. “That attitude made all the difference. My coach always tells us it’s a mental game and everything starts there.”

That said, she admired the duck feather Satasangi tucked into her hair.

“I love ducks,” Satasangi said. “I have so many duck stuffed animals at home. I always wear a feather in my hair.

“This is the best race I’ve had all season, and it’s all thanks to the competition here.”

McLean’s Caroline Howley was making her season debut after missing most of September with a knee injury that forced her onto an Alter-G treadmill.

“I wanted to go out and see what I could do,” she said. “I finished a few seconds from my best time last year, which was a lot faster than anything else I did, so I feel pretty good. And my knee didn’t hurt.”

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Sophomore Boys

Josh Shackelford had high hopes for swinging into D.C. from Gloucester County, Va. and winning the sophomore race.

“I don’t win all of my races, but I finish pretty far in the front,” he said. “I felt like against other sophomores, I’d do pretty well.”

He did, but he had to settle for third place between two new Montgomery County, Md. rivals who learned a lot about each other in the closest finish of the day, when Aaron Bratt (Walt Whitman) and John Riker (T.S. Wootton) both ran 15:37, with Bratt getting the edge in a lean.

“It was really tough,” Bratt said. “We got out fast and then didn’t slow down too much.”

That was Riker’s plan.

“I don’t like to kick, so I wanted to make sure we were fast from the start,” he said.

Riker’s coach Kellie Redmond described him, even as a freshman, as being analytic to the point of writing several-page race reflections.

Bratt said it was the pair’s first time seriously racing each other, but he expected the two to continue to improve together.

Riker agreed.

“It’s going to be exciting racing him for two more years,” he said.

Though Shackelford expected to win, he was thrilled with a 40-second PR and to be healthy after a bout with anemia last fall.

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Junior Girls

Holt went out hard from the gun, aiming for Weini Kelati‘s 17:45 record from the meet’s inaugural race in 2014. She had a four-second lead on Green at the mile, coming through in 5:16, then split 10:50 after a 5:34 second mile.

Confidence made a big difference for Holt.

“Last year I was a little hesitant on this course,” she said about an effort that still ended in a sophomore race victory. “This year I just attacked the whole course, I didn’t hold back.”

She felt confident she could dip under 17 minutes, but it took about all she had.

“I definitely had to spring at the end to get it,” she said. “When we were coming up on the track (with roughly 200 meters to go), I couldn’t see the clock but one of my teammate’s parents told I had to go right then.”

It wasn’t just her teammates’ parents cheering her on. Holt got the sense that seemingly everyone on the course knew how hard she was pushing and booster her resolve.

“It’s an amazing community,” she said.

Walter Jonhnson’s Abbey Green was hoping to narrow the margin between the two after last week’s Oatlands Invitational but was stymied in part by box assignments, with her Walter Johnson team on the opposite end of the starting line from Holt’s George Marshall team.

“I think we played it differently, she got out a little faster than I expected and I was chasing her from the start,” Green said. “I was never really close enough to her.”

She still ran 17:14.

“I just tried my hardest to keep on pace, close the gap a little,” she said.

Having run DCXC before, when she finished third in the 2015 sophomore race, Green knew the race was an opportunity to run a fast time, but she was guarded in her optimism.

“I knew it was a flat course, but each day is different and you don’t know if you’re going to feel great,” she said. “I’m lucky that I felt great.”

Last year’s race was a bit of a shock because Green had never run such a fast course.

“I wasn’t approaching it with a strategy, I was just running,” she said. “After running indoor and outdoor track last year, I’m a lot better at flat courses, just running fast.”

Holt’s teammate Ava Bir finished third in what she described as a rebound.

“I had a rough week with training, school, socially, basically everything,” she said. “Running this well was a surprise.”

Though DCXC has become a race where people come to run fast, all-out, Bir was hoping to take away some lessons about racing tactically, but with more than  90 seconds between her and Green and a 26-second cushion over fourth place finisher Kenady Horne, she spent the entire race alone.

“I definitely slowed down a lot on my own,” she said. “My motivation was to not let anyone catch me, but the spectators were so supportive. You’re not running alone in the woods, so you have people all over the course.”

That said, the course was too flat for Bir.

“I really do better on hilly courses,” she said.

Emma O’Brien from Columbia, Md.’s Atholton scored a 2-minute PR, putting everything together in what she called a special race.

“I was really focused, really motivated, really excited about this race,” she said. “I had people ahead of me and they kept motivating me to run faster.”

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Junior Boys

Derek Johnson joined Hassebrock as an individual winner from Tuscarora, and moved up from his runner-up spot in last year’s sophomore race.

“I felt like I was controlling the race the while time,” he said. “Maybe the other guys thought differently, but with a mile and a half to go, I just decided to see who could hang.”

Last year, he thought he could hang until he lost in a sprint at the end.

“That was devastating,” he said. “I wanted to make sure it didn’t come down to pure speed again.”

But he didn’t expect to run 15:21 for a 5-second gap over Jay Hall, from Charles County, Md.’s Westlake.

“I ran a little too much the week before Oatlands, so I cut my mileage at the end of this week,” Johnson said. “I could feel it, just being fresher, after the first mile.”

Jay Hall took the opportunity to race some fast guys, and he made the most of it by improving by roughly 45 seconds from the Nike Cross Southeast race.

Poolesville’s Ryan Lockett finished third, with a PR by “uhh, a lot.”

He won the freshman race in 2014 before spending a year at Gonzaga. After this year’s race, he was surrounded by his old teammates, having shown them that even though he lives on the far western edge of Montgomery County, he hasn’t fallen off the face of the Earth.

“I was really disappointed with last year, so I worked a lot harder over the summer this year,” he said. “I didn’t die over the last mile like I did last year. That distance helped my endurance a lot.”

Like Lockett, the J.E.B. Stuart junior duo of Natnael Asmelash (6th, 16:08) and Matthew O’Cadiz (8th, 16:17) are reaping the benefits 0f more summer mileage, up to high 40s after years in the 20s.

“I felt like the first two miles (10:02) were faster than I usually go, but I felt a lot better in the third mile.

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Senior Girls

A little good-natured teasing has come back to bite Leah Walker, but in a good way.

Her daughter, Hayley Jackson, didn’t know what cross country was, a week before she started high school at Patuxent. When she found out, she asked “who would run three miles for fun?” A former Calvert High star, Walker challenged Jackson, who was looking for an after-school activity when he dreams of being in the school play were dashed.

“She told I wouldn’t be able to run her times,” Jackson said. “I tried and I was our top girl in our first race. She hasn’t really been talking much about her times anymore.”

The track talk in their house has focused on helping Jackson go forward from there, a path that has , so far, added up to a pair of 2A cross country titles.

“From my first race, it just hasn’t been hard to run fast,” she said. “I live 10 minutes away from the naval base, the power plant, the natural gas plant… maybe that’s why I’m so fast. Maybe it’s the radiation.”

As for why she ran fast at DCXC, winning the senior race in 17:42, the answer was more tangible.

“I heard you get a backpack with a lot of stuff if you win,” she said. “I heard there were Beats headphones in there and I told myself I wasn’t going home without a backpack.”

Though she suffered from some asthma during the race, she pushed those struggles aside by doing free association exercises.

“We ran by the river, I saw water and thought I’d really like some water at the end of the race,” she said. “Stuff like that keeps me happy, and I run best when I’m happy.”

Walter Johnson’s Katrione Kirsch trailed by 30 seconds, and in the process ran a 40-second PR. When Jackson went hard from the start, splitting 5:33 to Kirsch’s 5:43, Kirsch just wanted to keep Jackson in sight.

“I don’t usually like to think about time, I just like to run as hard as I can,” she said. “I’m super-ambitious with my racing but don’t always have the kick to finish is off. I did today.”

She held off Winston Churchill’s Julia Reicin by three seconds.

“There was no sun,” Reicin said. “It’s so nice to have a race that isn’t hot or humid.”

Westfield’s Didi Pace viewed the race as an opportunity to really go for a fast time. Her success created a feedback loop.

“I love the course. It was nice and flat, but when you realize how fast you’re going, you know you have to keep it up,” she said. “The race taught me to not be afraid to take chances, believe that you can be in the front pack and just make it happen.”

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Senior Boys

Saurev Velleleth defended his class’ title, again, running 15:01 for the day’s fastest time.

“I was debating different strategies before the race but when I was on the line I just decided to go for it, run for a big PR,” he said.

T.C. Williams’ John Mackay followed him through the mile in 4:49 and the two mile in 9:43 before Velleleth put a five-second gap on him in the last mile.

“I just went out and stuck with him,” Mackay said. “I was proud of myself for doing that. Last year I had a lot of confidence issues, I’d see people on the line and know I couldn’t beat them.

“Today, I thought about dropping back, but I knew if I could just stick with him, I could set myself up for something really great.”

It was mutually beneficial.

“I couldn’t run that fast without him with me,” Velleleth said. “It’s still early in the season, I’m still training through and I’ve been killing my legs on hilly courses.”

Harry Monroe continued Gonzaga’s strong showing with a third place finish in 15:21.

“I just wan 15:57 at Adidas last week, and that was a big PR, so I’m surprised to do it again,” he said. “I saw my teammates and former teammates run well all day today and I knew I had to match them and go  a little faster.”

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Chasing the Spotlight

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Page Lester – National Cathedral School – Junior

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Abigail Green – Walter Johnson – Junior

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

It’s a rivalry she’s embracing.

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

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

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

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

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Ahmed Hassan – Oakton – Junior

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

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

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

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

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

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Heather Holt – George Marshall – Junior

Emma Wolcott – Tuscarora – Junior

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Saurav Velleleth – Thomas Jefferson – Senior

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

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

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

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

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

Highlights – Virginia 5A: 3rd

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

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Patrick Lynch – George Marshall – Senior

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

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

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

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

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

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Sean Grimm – James Madison – Senior

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

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

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

He’s an endurance nut.

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

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

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

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Conor Lyons – Lake Braddock – Senior

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

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

If he wasn’t a runner?

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

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

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Casey Kendall – Oakton – Senior

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Danielle Bartholomew – Osbourn Park – Senior

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Rohann Asfaw – Richard Montgomery – Junior

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

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

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

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

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

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Rachel McArthur – Patriot – Senior

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

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

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

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

“Just a little.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Brandon McGorty – Chantilly – Senior

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

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

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

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

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

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Derek Johnson – Tuscarora – Junior

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

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

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

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

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

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Colton Bogucki – Loudoun Valley – Junior

Peter Morris – Loudoun Valley – Junior

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Morris looked outward.

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

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

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

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Sarah Daniels – Junior – Lake Braddock

Kate Murphy – Senior – Lake Braddock

Emily Schiesl – Senior – Lake Braddock

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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