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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Paint Branch senior Bethlehem Taye finished one second behind Green.

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

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

Understandably, Martin was proud of his team.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tilley was pleased with his discipline during the race.

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

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

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

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

Poolesville was the seventh girls’ 3A team.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Coach Alisa Byers shed some light on that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I had a long talk with my dad last night about where I was with running right now,” he said. “I was about ready to get started with indoors, but he reminded me that this race was an opportunity and I came in with a clear head.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dulaney coach Chad Boyle was not romanticizing when he said the Glory Days Invitational flew under the radar as a top cross country meet.

“This is an unbelievably competitive meet,” he said.  “Kirstin Meek should be in the hunt for top three in the 4A meet and she was 12th today.”

[button-red url=”http://va.milesplit.com/meets/212167/results#.Vh0zOvlVhBf” target=”_self” position=”left”] Results [/button-red]The girls varsity race was a near-complete all-star collection, with Virginia 4A (and national) title threat Weini Kelati burning the field early and leaving Pan Am Juniors 1,500 meter champion Kate Murphy, Virginia 5A defending champion Heather Holt and Taylor Knibb, the top private school runner in D.C. and Maryland last year, to sort the rest of the top spots.

Kelati, a senior at Heritage, finished in 17:11, 26 seconds ahead of Lake Braddock junior Murphy.

“I wanted to go under 17 minutes, it was hard to pace by myself,” Kelati said. “I was a little confused on the course. All of a sudden people told me to ‘run this way.'”

Murphy is easing into her season after racing on the track in early August, and was suffering from a cold, which convinced her to back off and let Kelati go. She still shed George Marshall sophomore Holt in the second half.

“I felt run down and my breathing was a little off,” Murphy said. “With 400 left, I had a little turnover so I finished quickly.”

Holt tried to stick with Murphy after getting out a little fast in the first half mile.

“When I lost her around a turn, it was devastating,” she said. “It was just a little too fast for me, and after that I knew I had to try to hold on to third place, not try to chase her.”

Holt finished in 18:12. Last year, after a week of heavy rain preceded a morning storm when the Marshall team was getting on the bus, coach Darrell General called off the trip to the soaking wet course.

Knibb won the varsity B race last year, running 19:10 compared to this year’s 18:27.  Like Murphy, she is also easing into her cross country season after concluding her triathlon racing season. She won the DCXC senior race on her first day back on the cross country team.

“I’ve been really inconsistent and getting back into swimming, too so my body’s all messed up,” she said. “I didn’t feel great, but you can’t feel great every race. You might be sick when you’re in shape and you’ll wind up in the same place. I definitely took it out too fast today because I was ‘wheels off the bus’ after mile one.”

Lake Braddock won the team title with 49 points over James Madison’s 78, with five Bruins in the top 21, with Sara Daniels (sixth) and Sonya Butseva (ninth) joining Murphy in the top 10. Lake Braddock’s boys were not as lucky, losing by a point to Boyle’s Dulaney team, which brought five of its top seven back from last year’s second place Maryland 4A team. Good Counsel finished in third, led by second place Jack Wavering, and Severna Park, last year’s Maryland 4A champion, was fourth.

The week prior, Running Times ranked Severna Park and Dulaney second and third, respectively, in the southeast United States.

Eric Walz kicked off scoring for Dulaney in third (15:59) with Elijah Hawkins in 10th (16:13) and Sean Smyth and Andrew King right behind him in 16:15.

“Our top four were just so, so solid,” Boyle said. “But in cross country you need five. Austin Carey (47th in 16:56) really did a lot of work in the last 800 meters to get us what we needed. Several of our guys did that. It’s the epitome of ‘every point counts.'”

Tyler Cox–Philyaw, a Millbrook senior, came on top in 15:49, but it got close toward the end.

“My first mile, I just felt insanely good,” he said. “I was at 4:52 and felt like I was running much easier, so I figured by not just keep it going? I was feeling a little labored after two miles (10:01), so I took a mile and a half to recover so I’d have something left at the end for someone coming back at me. I was able to hold off Wavering and felt pretty comfortable where he was when I crossed the line.”

Wavering has been racing well this season, with a third place finish at the Oatlands Invitational three weeks ago.

“At Oatlands, coming in behind (Andrew) Hunter and (Jonathan) Lomogda, I look at that every way I could and I told Jack that was the best race any kid I have ever coached has had,” said Falcons coach Tom Arnold. “I think today was as good.”

Wavering ran 15:52 for a five-second margin over Walz and just three seconds behind Cox-Philyah.

“What amazes me about him is that he doesn’t make mistakes,” Arnold said. “He knows he doesn’t have a great leg speed, but coming to a fast course like this, that doesn’t play to his strengths, it doesn’t discourage him at all. It challenges him–he knows he has to run down some guys who are faster than him and he knows what it takes to make that happen. He beat a bunch of studs today.  Athletically, there’s no way Jack Wavering beats all of those guys today, but they don’t have what he has–this unbelievable focus.”

And Wavering was just that focused during the race.

“I was thinking about what would happen if I didn’t make a move soon to put those guys behind me before we could see the finish line,” he said. “We worked on putting on a mid-race surge this week, without even thinking about it, and that paid off today.”

Centreville junior Dan Horoho kicked off a good day for the Centreville boys by finishing fourth in 16:05, an improvement in all ways over last year’s race, when he ran 17:18 for 56th.

“Last year was just a mud pit,” he said. “And I was coming off of pneumonia. This year, I’ve just been training with a great group of guys, we’re working out hard and we had PRs left and right.”

Senior Brent Bailey followed 10 seconds behind in 13th place.

Forty-one schools and more than 3,000 high school cross country runners flocked to Kenilworth Park in Northeast D.C. Saturday for the second DCXC Invitational. The invitational was for the most part a D.C., Maryland, Virginia showdown, but the meet also featured appearances from Thousand Islands Secondary School, from Ontario, Canada, and Trinity High School, from Louisville, Kent.

The format was like last year. The varsity races were split among classes and each race scored just three runners per team. A new college race allowed American, George Washington, Howard and Catholic universities to race in the district.

[button-red url=”http://dcxc15.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/#/” target=”_self” position=”left”] Results [/button-red]The results compiled for all races led to James Madison winning the girls’ overall team title and Trinity – 18-time Kentucky state champions – winning the boys’ races. James Madison, which also won the aggregate overall title, was followed by Walt Whitman, Walter Johnson, W.T. Woodson and Yorktown. Trinity was followed by Wootton, Gonzaga, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison.

Trinity did more than up the level of competition. The all-boys Catholic school added Irishness plus some great soundbites.

Example: As Trinity’s Trevor Warren, who won the sophomore race, wrapped up a Pace the Nation podcast interview with Chris Farley, one of Warren’s teammates called out: “Trevor, you didn’t announce the mixtape, bro.”

Trinity’s coach, Greg Waggoner, said that D.C.’s Edmund Burke School had made the trip out to Louisville for Trinity’s invitational. He heard about the DCXC Invitational from Edmund Burke’s coach, Brian Bobo, and spent Friday with 40 of his runners “doing the D.C. tourist thing.”

Walking through the DCXC Invitational felt like walking through a festival. The fields were covered with tents; inside the track DJ Thunderbunny took requests. Parents, fans, and teammates massed in several places to provide support: the one-mile mark, the portion looping behind the starting line, and particularly the final stretch on the track.

[button-red url=”http://www.runwashington.com/2014/09/28/dcxcinvite/” target=”_self” position=”left”] Last year[/button-red]T.C. Williams’ Sam Schneider enjoyed the atmosphere. He could hear his family and friends calling out his name as he entered the last 50 meters on the track, which helped him enough to pick up two spots to crack the top 100 in the junior boys race. He was 99th in 19:17. “It’s great,” he said. “It really helps you run through the course. It’s a lot easier with people chanting your name.”

The course itself was flat, run on an open, windswept field marked with pink flags and ribbons and neon cones. The feared rain never came and the temperature was decidedly cool (last year temps hovered above 90 degrees). Wind, however, was the day’s big factor. Had the freshman girls turned around just before the gun fired, after one false start, a little past 3 p.m., they might have seen one team’s tent go temporarily airborne.

Freshman girls

One athlete in the freshmen girls race who was not fazed by the headwinds at all was Tuscarora’s Ava Hassebrock, who won the race in 19:58. “When you are running, the wind is really nice because it cools you off,” she said.

The soft-spoken Hasselbrock said she expected to be in the top five but not necessarily gunning for the win. Early in the race, she and Poolesville’s Nandini Satsangi, second in 20:12, separated themselves from the pack.

“It was a lot of fun,” said Satsangi. “I love chasing and being able to latch on to somebody.”

[button-red url=”https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1205115692848994.1073741866.189448104415763&type=1&l=d7542886c3″ target=”_self” position=”left”] Photos [/button-red]For Satsangi, the DCXC Invitational offered a challenge she had yet to encounter in her first season: not racing in the morning. Most freshmen would perhaps be thinking about how to time their nutrition differently. But Satsangi, who has epilepsy, had to think about when to take her medication. “It made it difficult to control my pace,” she said with a big smile, still absorbing her performance.

Georgetown Visitation’s Ally McKenzie, running only her second 5k, was third in 20:36. “I knew there were going to be some really good freshmen coming into this, so I just wanted to go out there and try my best.”

Her best effort helped Georgetown Visitation win the team title, as McKenzie’s classmate, Brennan Dunne, came through in 10th in 21:29. Washington-Lee, in second, edged out Briar Woods by just a point.

Freshman Boys

When they hit the track, Freedom’s Connor Wells seemed to have an insurmountable lead. Until he didn’t.

As Wells rounded the final turn, Washington-Lee’s Jonny Jackson pulled up right next to him. So did Trinity’s Jack Baum. Shocked, Wells kicked. “I got really nervous,” he said, “and I just poured it all out.”

Wells held off Jackson, in second, and Baum, in third, though they all finished in the identical times of 17:07.

Jackson and Baum had at least one thing in common. They weren’t pumped up just to be on the podium.

Jackson: “It’s better than I thought I would do, but I really would have liked to win.”

Baum: “I was pushing pretty hard at the end. I thought I could get him, but my legs just didn’t have anything left.”

Watch out Kentucky harriers!

[button-red url=”https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1205113746182522.1073741865.189448104415763&type=1&l=14d985234b” target=”_self” position=”left”] Photos [/button-red]Trinity won the freshman team title with just 15 points, putting seven boys in the top 20, with a spread of 17:07 to 18:44. Nick Neumann was fifth in 17:52, Nick Stauble seventh in 18:02.

Stauble noted, “We have high expectations,” to which Shane Williams, who was 10th in 18:19, added that their long-term goal is “nationals.”

Waggoner, in his 14th season, was pleased by their performances.

“They are a great little group of guys,” he said, “and one of the nice things is they like working with each other.”

Trinity was followed by Freedom and Thomas S. Wootton in the freshman boys team standings.

Sophomore Girls

George C. Marshall’s Heather Holt, coached by the legendary Darrell General, had a pretty simple race strategy: “to get out fast.” She also has pretty simple goal for the rest of the season: “to keep running faster.”

Holt passed through the mile in 5:28, 16 seconds up on the field, and pushed further ahead to earn a decisive victory in 18:18 and help George C. Marshall win the team title. It was the fastest girls’ time of the day.

Tuscarora’s Emma Wolcott, second in 18:47, said she mostly had to run her own race but appreciated having Holt to chase. “I think if I had been in front it would have been a little slower.”

[button-red url=”https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1205121159515114.1073741867.189448104415763&type=1&l=12576773b0″ target=”_self” position=”left”] Photos [/button-red]Wolcott was in turn a decisive runner-up. Walter Johnson’s Abigail Green rounded out the top three in 19:25. In the team standings her squad was right behind second-place James Madison, led by Jeana Bogdon‘s fourth place showing in 19:45.

For meet director Desmond Dunham, the race inspired some double duty. The Wilson coach was pleased with the performance of his sophomore girls. Alex Hannah led Wilson, finishing 20th in 21:15.

“I’m in a position to give a lot of coaches a much better experience,” said Dunham, who has coached in the area for decades, of meet directing. “With that I am blessed to be able to be in that position. But I don’t like stepping away from my coaching hat too much.”

Dunham gave his Wilson girls high-fives and congratulated them on a 7th place. He then exited the finish area and went back to his other job, saying, “Alright. I’m happy now.”

Sophomore Boys

Rest in peace Yogi Berra. This one really did seem like déjà vu all over again.

[button-red url=”https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1205122502848313.1073741868.189448104415763&type=1&l=5010c50dd9″ target=”_self” position=”left”] Photos [/button-red]The sophomore boys race went out conservatively. A big pack went through the mile in 5:15. This was followed by a big slowdown – a second mile covered in roughly 5:40 – that kept around 10 boys in the hunt for the win.

Warren, of Trinity, said: “I didn’t want to get out too hard. I just stayed with the pack, and then with about a mile to go we started pushing it.

It was all over. Warren had the victory all wrapped up. But then Tuscarora’s Derek Johnson pulled up next to him.

Warren said he no idea Johnson was so close. “But then he passed me,” he said, “so I had to get around him so I could beat him. I usually have a pretty good kick so I knew I could do it.”

Johnson finished in the identical time of 16:51. “I thought I had him,” Johnson said. “I thought [Warren] kicked too early, but I guess he had more than I thought.”

Thomas Jefferson’s Dylan Klapper took third, finishing just two seconds back in a 10-second personal best. “I was happy,” he said, “because I was able to stay with the pack for most of the race, then I kicked strong at the end.”

Trinity also won the sophomore title. Gonzaga was second, led by John Colucci, last year’s freshman winner, in seventh in 17:11. Tuscarora was third.

Junior boys and girls

As dusk crept closer there was almost a chill in the air. The wind held steady as more jubilant harriers, done with their races, ran back and forth – field to track, track to field – cheering on their teammates.

This year Thomas Jefferson’s Saurav Velleleth was on the starting line. Last year he won a Varsity B race, in the morning, so he could go to Homecoming.

[button-red url=”https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1205126889514541.1073741870.189448104415763&type=1&l=56007a46ac” target=”_self” position=”left”] Photos [/button-red]Perhaps describing why times, despite cooler temps, were a bit slower than last year, Velleleth said the second loop in the field was against the wind “and that kind of threw me off.” It didn’t throw him off much, though: Velleleth won in 16:16, becoming the day’s first varsity boy to win a race easily.

Runner-up was another matter. Velleleth left George C. Marshall’s Patrick Lynch in what Lynch described as no-man’s land and ultimately a tight race for second. Lynch held off third place Jackson Betts, of W.T. Woodson, by just a second. Jackson was just a second ahead of James Madison’s Sean Grimm, who was just two seconds in front of Gonzaga’s Harry Monroe.

Velleleth said he “knew it was going to be a fun race.” And he riled up teammates and Thomas Jefferson parents when, talking to Farley, he mentioned what Klapper had said after the sophomore race: “We want to win states,” Velleleth said.

In the junior girls division, James Madison’s Devon Williams won in 18:49.

[button-red url=”https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1205123919514838.1073741869.189448104415763&type=1&l=3825fab401″ target=”_self” position=”left”] Photos [/button-red]On one hand, it was a slower time than Holt and Wolcott had run in the sophomore race. On the other, Williams’ win was even more dominating. She won by 46 seconds, finishing before the next runner, Winston Churchill’s Julia Reicin, had even entered the track.

Winning – more than time – seems to be Williams’ priority. Asked if 18:49 was fast for her, she said, “Kind of?” Asked what her 5k personal best is, Williams added, “I’m not sure.”

Reicin was proud of her own effort. She ran her own race, she said, starting slowly and patiently moving up to second, the way she likes to run.

Williams’ victory, meantime, catapulted James Madison to the junior team title. Olivia Woods, third in 19:46, helped Walt Whitman finish second ahead of Thomas Jefferson.

Senior girls

Westfield’s Sara Freix had run hard. She had to sit for a while, looking woozy, before she could talk to a reporter. While she caught her breath, James Madison’s Morgan Wittrock, who edged Freix by one second to claim runner-up in 18:46, talked about how racing against Freix has been an important part of her development as a runner.

Wittrock noticed Freix her freshman year while they were racing at the Monroe Parker Invitational at Burke Lake Park. “And it was really fun,” Wittrock said. “[Freix] pushes it and I just try to go with her. It’s so good. I wouldn’t have gotten my time if it wasn’t for her.”

Freix rolled her ankle earlier in the week; she ran with it taped up to be safe. It turned out, though, to be her secret weapon. Having a little extra rest in her legs helped Freix run her best race of the season.

[button-red url=”https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1205129342847629.1073741871.189448104415763&type=1&l=a1ac8ed8bb” target=”_self” position=”left”] Photos [/button-red]Taylor Knibb, of Sidwell Friends School, was 16 seconds clear of field to win in 18:33, though her kick on the track suggested otherwise. “[The others] were right on my heels the whole time,” she said. “I did sneak some glances back, but I didn’t want to look back; it was kind of scary.” Knibb added: “I was very surprised. I guess you just have to work with whatever you have on any given day and run your best. Everyone ran great races today.”

Running only represents a third of Knibb’s endurance sports talent. She is one of the best junior triathletes in the world and juggles two racing seasons (her triathlon season, she said, started in May and ended the Friday before last).

Cross country and triathlons have a lot of overlap, obviously, but one commonality seems perfect. Knibb’s triathlons end with a 5k. Thus, she is training for the cross country distance year-round while also biking and swimming.

James Madison also won the senior team title, followed by Walt Whitman and Walter Johnson.

Senior Boys

Tuscarora’s Fitsum Seyoum only took up cross-country last year. He went out for track as a freshman, he said, but didn’t like the cold weather. This has had him flying under the radar; he was not an All-Run Washington selection heading into this season. Not anymore. He had already won the Monroe Parker and Great Meadows invitationals, though an ankle injury forced him to drop out of Oatlands last weekend.

Seyoum won the senior boys race in 15:53. It was the fastest time of the day. Seyoum, though, thought of his race as more of a gusty one than a fast one. “It was very windy,” he said. “I went out and I was just saying, ‘Man, it’s going to be a rough race.'”

[button-red url=”https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1205132242847339.1073741872.189448104415763&type=1&l=bf341ae89f” target=”_self” position=”left”] Photos [/button-red]He followed Woodson’s Robert Lockwood through the mile in 4:55. Georgetown Day School’s Tristan Colaizzi, who won the junior race last year in 15:41, was a few seconds back in 4:58. But Seyoum did not wait for the track to get moving. “I decided it was going to be a gutsy day and I’d just go for it,” he said.

Lockwood finished in 16:03. Colaizzi moved ahead of him to get within striking distance of Seyoum and crack 16 minutes: 15:59.

For Colaizzi, this DCXC Invitational was a different race than the inaugural running. “My training was different this year; I’m trying to peak later in the season,” he said. His mileage is up close to 60 miles per week – “I’m a mile, 800 guy – that’s high,” he clarified – and his goal was “just to have fun.”

As it happens, Colaizzi worked for Pacers last summer. Part of his experience was learning about the work that goes on behind the scenes and on race day to stage a high school cross country invitational.

“So, just for me,” he said, “that’s a big honor …

“Virginia has their big invites. D.C. has one now.”

 

Northern Virginia’s two returning Foot Locker finalists kicked off their senior cross country seasons with dominant victories in their Loudoun County backyard at the Oatlands Invitational.

Weini Kelati, whose first race for Heritage High School involved tying her shoelaces twice at this race last year, pulled away from the field early to win by 1:22 in 17:11 — 71 seconds faster than last year, widening the gulf between her and repeat-runner-up Abby Colbert of West Virginia’s Jefferson High School. In the boys race, Loudoun Valley’s Andrew Hunter breezed to an easy win with a strong second half.

“That’s going to be her plan every race,” said Heritage coach Doug Gilbert. “That’s the way she wants to go, so the best thing I can do as a coach is get her trained so she doesn’t fade in the end, because she did that a lot last year.”

Incidentally, the 17:12 Kelati ran at Oatlands is the same time E.C. Glass’ Libby Davidson ran to beat her at the Virginia 4A championships in November. The Oatlands course can best be described as “quite hilly,” with a dramatic climb approaching 2.5 miles and a rolling approach to the finish line. The only flattish stretches are at the course’s lowest points at the end of mile two.

Kelati spoke virtually no English when first arrived in Leesburg from Eritea, and Gilbert admitted that was a major barrier in figuring out her training plan.

[button-red url=”http://va.milesplit.com/meets/213387/results#.Vf7xo99Vikr” target=”_self” position=”left”] Results [/button-red]”Asking ‘what was your training like last year?’ got to be a lot more complicated than it should be,” he said. “Now that we can communicate, it’s a lot easier to sit down and come away with a plan. Now we’re comfortable enough with each other that she can run 85 miles a week and I’m not worried about her. Last year I kept her to 50.”

As for Kelati’s Oatlands performance this year, Gilbert didn’t know just how fast she would run, but he said the mystery was part of the fun.

“She did a tempo on the course this week and ran 18:50, so I knew no matter what, it would be fast,” he said.

Kelati’s charge to the front took the pressure off of Sami King, a Walt Whitman senior who, while running for the Field School for two years, often saw herself rabbiting smaller races.

“That’s something I’m trying to work on this season, planning for for negative splits and a strong kick,” she said.

Leading turned out to not be an option, when the race started and King found herself in roughly 40th place.

“The Foot Locker (Northeast) regional meet is the only race that I’ve been in like this,” she said. “Hopefully this competition will help me run some fast times.”

Her 10th place finish, along with Olivia Woods‘ 19th place finish, helped Whitman beat Heritage by 13 points.

“We’re still figuring things out,” said Whitman coach Steve Hays. “It’s our first invitational of the year and everyone has improved from last year. Some of the teams we beat weren’t at full strength, so that’s a reminder that things can change in every race.”

Heritage was one of those teams, though senior Georgie Mackenzie‘s return to the regular season lineup was a lot of good fortune. Her seventh place finish

Besides Kelati’s one point, the Pride got a boost from senior Georgie Mackenzie’s finish in seventh. She missed a month last year, and was back in time for the postseason, when the team finished third at the state meet.

Sophomore Audrey Corbet, 71st in 21:22, was the 10th woman for the Pride last year, and is continuing the progress she made at last year’s Foot Locker South freshman race.

“She didn’t run in our postseason varsity races, but by the end of November, her training caught up,” Gilbert said.

Behind Kelati and Colbert, Osbourn Park junior Danielle Bartholomew’s third place finish in 18:50 was somewhat of a surprise, given her 76th place finish at the Northern Region meet last fall.

“My freshman year I kind of sucked,” she said. “My sophomore year I got better and now my junior year, I just trained hard over the summer and I guess it kind of all paid off.”

She blew away her expectations at the Fork Union Invitational a week before, running 17:23 for three miles.

“Way below my goal,” she said. “It’s hard to gauge myself to my previous times because so much has changed. I’m just randomly throwing out times, and then telling myself to push to finish a race and make it feel good.”

She made up two spots in the third mile, the byproduct of her internal approach to the race.

“I wanted to get out at a good pace for me, not let me heart rate get out of control,” she said. “That hill in the woods, it was tough for me, but it was the moment that I decided that even though my legs hurt and I was tired, I was just going to keep going.

“I wasn’t really racing them, I was just trying to push myself and I passed them along the way,” she said.

Coach Mike Schuster downplayed Barthlolomew’s splash.

“There’s no magic to it — confidence and training,” he said. “She’s a tough kid and she responds to adversity.”

While Shuster suspected, from her summer training, she could be the team’s top runner, he didn’t expect her to run quite that fast.

“Her strength isn’t going out, fast, it’s running even,” he said. “She’s smart, and she can handle a tough course like this.”

Hunter’s took a more measured approach to his race than Kelati in his repeat win, running 15:12, compared to last year’s 15:21.

[button-red url=”http://www.runwashington.com/2015/09/20/drew-hunter-homemade-champion/” target=”_self” position=”left”] More on Hunter [/button-red]

“I wanted to start off easy,” he said. “No need to run too hard at the start. I took a look back at about a mile and a half and saw I had a bit of a gap, so I started pushing then and just finished hard.”

Hunter, who ran 8:42 for two miles earlier this year, is planning a mostly local fall season until November,when he will decide between aiming for Foot Locker, where he finished fourth last year, or Nike Cross Nationals.

Cox senior Jonathan Lomogda dropped his time by 30 seconds to finish second in 15:38. He was the third 6A finisher at the state meet last year.

Good Counsel senior Jack Wavering finished third, a few seconds ahead of Richard Montgomery junior Rohann Asfaw.

“I really like hills, and there were a lot of guys out there who have good leg speed, so I knew I had to pull away and feel safe with about 600 meters to go,” Wavering said. “I pushed the big hill and tried to keep some momentum on the downhill after that.

The Flacons finished fifth, though without typical number two Kevin McGiven. Despite that, Wavering said nobody exactly made a big jump to compensate, and that’s fine by him.

“We like to run consistently, so nobody is running out of character,” he said. “We want to know what we can do and do it.”

Asfaw was a few seconds off of his PR, running 16:03 for fourth place. That kind of progress, a month ahead of where he was last season on a much hillier course, confirms a lot of the confidence he has in his training this year.

“My legs are a little tired, but we’ve been going at it and racing on weekends, so I’m looking forward to just having a week of training before we go to Octoberfest (Oct. 3),” he said.

After starting off two dozen or so back from the lead, Asfaw picked up the pace and attacked the downhills to make up a lot of ground on frontrunners who ran out of gas when the course got tougher.

“I knew it would go out too fast for me, so I just wanted to stay back and let things fall into place,” he said. “I was through the mile in 4:52 — I was looking for more like 5:00 — but I wasn’t in over my head.”

As a freshman, Asfaw ran the underclassman junior varsity race, finishing in 18:17. Two years later and more than two minutes faster, it as a completely different experience.

“I felt like I was in control, and I could maintain my speed on the uphills,” he said. “I couldn’t do that when I was a freshman.”

Mount Tabor traveled from Winston-Salem, N.C. after years of coach Patrick Cromwell‘s D.C.-area family’s lobbying. They made the 6.5 hour trip worthwhile by winning the boys race with a two-point edge over Thomas Jefferson. Sophomore Cameron Ponder led the team in 14th in 16:23.

“We wanted a challenging course, and boy, we got it,” he said. “We were totally out of our element from what we’re used to in North Carolina. They steamroll some of the courses so they’re as flat as a track. You’ve got hills here that have names.”

Seeing different teams appealed to Cromwell — putting his kids in a race where they didn’t know

“I don’t think we had a perfect day — our order was a little jumbled and the times are different than we’re used to because of the course, but I like how we kept their our composure. This is definitely the biggest race our program has been in.”

Mount Tabor’s top six all passed the mile mark faster than 4:52.

“We paid for that a little at the end,” Cromwell said.

After the race, the team headed into Washington, D.C. for sightseeing and the Nationals game.

Marc and Joan Hunter, the head coaches at South Lakes High School, knew they had a superstar.

They marveled as this kid finished second in the state in cross country. They watched in awe as the freshman — a freshman — went on to win the two mile in the spring.

Marc and Joan had met through coaching. Marc was then in his 10th year at South Lakes and Joan had joined him there after getting her own start at James Madison High School.

Marc had been an All-American who had discovered a passion for coaching after being sidelined by injuries. Joan had been a successful middle distance runner with a background in exercise physiology who came to enjoy coaching more than her own running.

This is to say that the Hunters were pretty pumped to have a kid, like Alan Webb, who was “off the charts,” said Marc. “We were just going [crazy]” thinking about his potential. The thing was, the Hunters had other kids, too: three of them, all toddlers. Thus, their dilemma.

“There was just no way to be good parents with three toddlers and be good year-round coaches,” Joan said, reflecting on their decision to retire from coaching after Webb’s freshman year.

“Everyone was telling me I was nuts,” Marc said, who helped hire Scott Raczko, his and Joan’s replacement. “I thought I was nuts. But family comes first.”

In his senior season Webb would become the fourth American high-schooler to break four minutes in the mile and the fastest prep miler of all time. His run of 3:53.43 at that year’s Prefontaine Classic shattered a record, then held by Jim Ryun, that had stood for 36 years.

The Hunters had missed their shot.

Or maybe they hadn’t.

If you had gone to a South Lakes practice in 1997 or 1998 you certainly would have seen a freshman-year Webb zipping through a workout. You also might have seen, somewhere on the periphery of it all, a kid playing in a sandbox.

This was Drew Hunter, Joan’s and Marc’s second child. And Drew is now a rising senior at Loudoun Valley High School. And Joan and Marc are now Loudoun Valley’s cross country and track coaches; they’re heading into the third year of their second coaching career. And Drew, as it turns out, is now something of a superstar himself.

This year he might even become the eighth American high schooler to break four minutes in the mile. Or the first boy from Northern Virginia to win the Foot Locker Cross Country Championship.

(Editor’s note: he was)

Discovering the point

Marc and Joan Hunter have nine children, including five whom they adopted. They’ve encouraged their children to play a sport to stay active, Joan said, and all of them have done at least some running, but none of have taken to it like Drew.

But he didn’t take to the sport right away. Or at least he did not like it right away. When he was 9 or 10, Drew participated in youth track. He broke three minutes for 800 meters, which was pretty impressive, except he hated every step of it.

“I remember him coming up to us one time after winning some races and saying, ‘Can I talk to you guys?'” Marc said. “[Drew said] ‘I really don’t like running. I know I’m good, but I don’t like it. It’s too hard. I don’t want to do this anymore.'”

Marc continued: “We just went, ‘Oh, gosh, we don’t want you to run if you don’t like it. That’s why we coach. We love the sport. It doesn’t mean you have to love the sport.'”

So Drew quit.

“We just didn’t make him run ever again,” Joan said. “He was such a good athlete there was no reason to make him run track, just to be active. He was playing basketball and football and baseball and he was good at those things. We just said: ‘you do what you want to do.'”

He did, however, have to run a mile in gym class. But even after clocking around 5:20 as an eighth grader, Drew still wasn’t digging it.

At that time, he said, “I just kind of assumed if you were good at it you had to do it, and that’s kind of why I did it.” Running for Drew was like a Plan C, “something for people who could not do another sport,” Joan said.

His parents were surprised, then, when Drew told them he was going out for cross country. This news broke about a month before the start of cross country season, after which “I trained like three days a week, running 30 minutes just like every other day, jogging,” Drew said.

His attitude, his parents said, was not impressing them much, either.

“We actually kind of tried to talk him out of doing [cross country] before ninth grade … because we love the sport [and] we kind of got tired of hearing him put the sport down,” Joan said. “We were like, if you think it’s so stupid, don’t do it.”

Marc, on the other hand, was “ecstatic” when Drew placed seventh in Loudoun Valley’s time trial, positioning himself to make varsity. The team had not exactly been a powerhouse in recent years, but Marc still found the result to be encouraging. “Obviously, little did I know what was about to happen,” he said.

In the first meet, Drew was Loudoun’s number three. By the fourth meet he was the best on the team. He might have even qualified for the state meet had he not gotten sick the week of regionals.

When basketball season rolled around, and Drew rolled his ankle, the family saw how his priorities had rapidly turned. His dad met him in the locker room to help him tape the ankle and heard the words, “I’m quitting.”

Marc recalled: “And I said, ‘No, you can’t quit; it’s the middle of the season!’ He said, ‘No, I mean after this basketball season, I’m done with other sports; I’m just going to concentrate on cross country and track.'”

“I felt like,” Drew said, “if I started training more seriously, especially ran every day and started actually putting forth the effort that I put into other sports, then I could probably be decent at it. And I think that the next summer” — after making all-state in the outdoor two mile — “was when I took off because that was when I really caught the running bug.”

In the fall, Marc and Joan, seeing their son transformed and wanting to make sure he got good coaching, took over Loudoun Valley’s cross country and track programs. Drew, meanwhile, won his first cross country state championship.

 

Penn Relays 3,000m High School Championship, 2014

It was a huge field and the start was hectic. The boys shot out, lurching. Drew Hunter, on the rail, seeded 14th facing the best high schoolers in the country, reached out and put his hand on the back in front of him to stay balanced. The kids behind him did the same to him.

The announcers on Flotrack, during the first lap, said he was from “Luden” Valley. They said this as you saw him shoot out to the second lane and squeeze past two guys to stay in the middle of the pack.

Early in the race there were times he would fall out of the picture. Lap by lap, though, he moved up a little more through the pack — his form more athletic than classic; his posture very upright; his head bobbing a bit. (Was he hurting or not hurting at all?)

At the bell lap Hunter was there at the front. With 300 to go, he made his move, kicking into the lead.

It looked like he had it won, too. But then Justyn Knight, of Toronto, threw in a big surge and pulled up next to him and it looked like Knight might roll him.

As soon as Knight pulled up next to him, though, Hunter responded with a savage surge and rocketed ahead in the final straight. Oh my gosh – what? WHAT? Hello! Those were the words from the FloTrack broadcast announcing that Hunter had run 8:16.31, a new sophomore class record, and had won with a ridiculous kick.

“That was the first time I ever had a kick, ever — and after that it’s what I can trust and rely on,” Hunter said.

In one race he had established himself as one of the top high school runners in the country and had dialed in on a very simple race strategy going forward.

“Going into races my mindset is to win,” he said. “And if I win, then a good time, good result will come… It’s not complicated. It’s not try to run this split and this split on the second lap. It’s really just put yourself in a position to win on bell lap.”

Hunter, in his sophomore season, won state mile and two mile titles and was runner-up in the two mile at the New Balance National Outdoors meet. He also ran 4:09 for 1,600 meters.

 

The Drew Project

Marc and Joan Hunter had last coached during an era in American distance running that valued low-mileage, high-intensity training.

There is a reason that the United States squads for the 2000 Olympic marathon were each teams of one. “We just did not have good distance runners for the most part,” said Joan, who writes Drew’s workouts.

Joan’s own philosophy about training changed when she turned to Tom Schwartz, perhaps better known in the LetsRun.com world as “Tinman,” for advice on competing in masters track.

Joan, as it turned out, liked nothing more than doing a dozen really-fast 200s. Schwartz had other ideas, like running more miles, doing longer intervals with shorter rest periods, and doing tempo runs. Joan, in turn, started running some of the best masters times in the country at everything from 400 meters to 5k. And Schwartz now helps write Drew’s training, as well.

Drew ran about 65 miles per week last year, rarely resting before races. This year he aims to run about 70 miles per week.

“It’s not what I would call high mileage,” Joan said, “but it is certainly more than I ran in high school.”

Meanwhile, for someone who begrudgingly took up cross country, Drew has been quick to adjust his lifestyle. He credited his leap in his performances during his sophomore year to consistent training, eating better, and sleeping more. “I think when you are training at a high level you have to do the little things,” he said.

For Drew, doing things right also can mean training alone, though he noted that some of his best friends are his cross country teammates.

Doing things right also meant staying in Loudoun County recently while the rest of the Hunters went on a vacation to the beach. First, he isn’t a fan of running on the beach. Second, he had just started his summer training and was eager to get back into his routine.

“I wanted to keep the ball rolling,” he said. “I kind of wanted to focus and make training the priority.”

Part of what has Drew so focused is the realization, really, that if his parents can do it, he probably can, too.

When he was growing up, he would watch his mom compete and see how good she was. His dad, who could not run after 23, only had stories and times, but eventually it all clicked.

“I mean, if you tell an 8-year-old your 5k PR is 13:36, you’re not going to have any idea what that is,” Drew said. “Once I started running freshman and sophomore year, I realized how good my dad was. That also kind of gave me more motivation to go after his PRs and try to be as good as him.”

 

Brooks PR Invitational 2 mile, 2015

In his junior year appearance at the Penn Relays Drew Hunter won the mile in 4:07, becoming the first prep runner since Matthew Centrowitz to win both of the event’s individual distance races.

Prior to the Brooks PR Invitational he had lowered his mile best to 4:02.36. This is in addition to winning everything in Virginia there was to win, including running 14:36 to set a meet and course record in the state cross country meet.

Frankly though, heading into June’s Brooks PR Invitational, in Seattle, some thought Grant Fisher, from Michigan, was unbeatable. Fisher had recently become the seventh high school runner to break four minutes in the mile. He had not lost to another high school runner in years. That included a healthy margin over Hunter, who was fourth at last year’s Foot Locker Cross Country Championships, one of the deepest high school championships in history.

It looked at times like Fisher was just cruising along, floating behind Mikey Brannigan through the mile in 4:24. He is a lean yet powerful runner with seemingly perfect arm swings.

The last time they had raced, Hunter was right with him with 200 meters to go. Fifty meters later, though, he got tripped up and couldn’t make up the gap. It was disappointing for Hunter but also instilled in him the belief that he could be the one to break Fisher’s winning streak. This time, he would use the same race strategy: kick with 400 to go; try to accelerate every 100 meters; in the stretch “just outrun him.”

With 600 to go, Fisher moved into a clear lane and seemed to be biding his time. Hunter’s game was cat and mouse: he was out in lane two off Fisher’s shoulder. At the bell he popped out a little further into lane two to get some space and then he went, bolting, Fisher closing right with him. The rest of the field disappeared. It was Fisher and Hunter, hammering, strides overlapping in a way that conjured that mystical Tergat–Gebreselassie moment. This was anyone’s race. And there was 100 to go. There was 50 to go … and Hunter, like at Penn, found that gear and blasted ahead, winning in 8:42.51, by a second.

“Grant’s one of my good friends,” Hunter said. “He’s a great guy, and he’s one of the guy’s I’ve looked up to.” Which is nice sportsmanship. But Hunter, too, is a sportsman. Competing is what makes him tick.

He then said: “But I think it’s necessary. Track and field needs rivalries. I am excited to race him again in college. It should be a blast.”

Hunter might end up being number eight. But it also seems like he’ll need a race to win to do it. And that’s a good thing.