While Northwood didn’t unseat Severna Park at the Maryland state meet, the Gladiators’ runner-up finish was the best by a D.C.-area boys team in six years. On the girls’ side, Bethesda remained home to the top team, but this year it was Walt Whitman. Private schools saw some solid work by St. Andrew’s freshman Allison Mitchell and Bullis’ Nicholas Kariyanis.
The 2018 cross country season in the D.C. area was marked by a lot of rain. Some races, like the Oatlands and Octoberfest invitationals, were cancelled outright. Others, like the Glory Days Invitational, were altered to preserve as much of the course as possible. Races that went on were often much slower, and forced runners to be more tactical. Times appropriately went out the window. It seemed to pay off, though, in late November when many the Nike Cross Southeast regional was run in a deluge. By that point, the conditions were second nature to most of our local runners, who took advantage and found themselves near the front of the race. Ten boys in the top 25 and three girls in the top 15. Loudoun Valley’s boys then went on to repeat as Nike Cross Nationals champions, the first boys team to do so, and improving on their record-low score in the process.
Locally, we saw the first public individual and team champions in D.C. state meet history, a first state title for Loudoun Valley’s girls, W.T. Woodson’s boys, West Springfield’s girls and Woodrow Wilson’s girls. Young runners had breakout seasons all over the place, while the veterans continued to demonstrate a mastery of the sport. Loudoun Valley’s boys won their fourth straight state title and Tuscarora’s girls won their fourth in five years.
There was panic in the Jungle.
People felt it at home in Purcellville, at the Commonwealth Games, in a University of Virginia dorm and beamed it back to the Gleendover Golf Course in Portland, Ore.
Wilson High School’s Vincent Kamani, the DCXC Invitational sophomore champion, talks about his development as a cross country runner.
D.C.-area runners dominated the Nike Cross Southeast meet, putting four runners in the top eight and 15 in the top 50. Loudoun Valley easily qualified for the national meet that “Purcellville” won last year, with Sam Affolder and Jacob Hunter finishing second and third in 15:14. Right behind Hunter, Eldad Mulugeta finished fourth in 15:15 and his Northwood teammate Obsaa Feda finished eighth in 15:20. The course at WakeMed Park in Raleigh, N.C. was extremely muddy after days of rain, with more rain throughout the races.
Nov. 24, 2018
Three Virginia teams won their first state championships Saturday at Great Meadow, while two regulars kept their annual appointments on the podium.
Tuscarora girls and defending national champion Loudoun Valley boys repeated as team champions in 5A and 4A, respectively, but Loudoun Valley and West Springfield’s girls an W.T. Woodson’s boys (6A) were both new to hoisting a trophy. LV’s Sam Affolder repeated and his teammate Ricky Fetterolf won her first individual title. Three Northern Virginia runners finished in second: Broad Run’s Ellie Desmond in 5A, and West Springfield’s Chase Kappeler and Woodson’s Jack Leech in 6A.
Seniors Obsaa Feda and Eldad Mulugeta led their Northwood High School cross country team to a second-place finish on Saturday at the Maryland state meet. It was also a D.C.-area school’s top finish in the 4A boys’ race since Walter Johnson’s runner-up finish in 2012.
The teammates ran together toward the finish line in the 4A boys’ race, but Feda crossed first, running the hilly three-mile course at Hereford High School in 15:44.05. Less than a second later, Mulugeta finished the race, earning a time of 15:44.29.
As the Montgomery Blair High School cross country team geared up for its weekly long run, Morgan Casey felt a pang of hunger. She would silently grind through the discomfort, and eventually it went away. This habit only worsened as the year wore on. By the end of her junior year, Casey was at least seven pounds lighter than the beginning of the year, a state champion, and anorexic.
She is not an anomaly. A 2007 study found that around 20 percent of female high school athletes self-reported disordered eating. Athletes tend to underestimate disordered eating and eating disorders, however, so the actual number could be much higher. This problem continues, and may even intensify, in college. One Columbia University study found that 35 percent of female college athletes were at risk of developing anorexia nervosa, and 58 percent were at risk of developing bulimia nervosa. Those with eating disorders face worsened physical health and a are also a high risk of suicide. With a mortality rate of about 10 percent, anorexia has been called the “most fatal mental health disorder” by the National Institute of Mental Health.
George Marshall cross country coach Darrell General, winner of two Marine Corps Marathons, is in the running for a $25,000 prize from the 2018 Hometown Heroes Award. Voting closes Friday, Nov. 16.
General is the only cross county or track coach among the finalists and the only East Coast finalist. For years, General has maintained a rigorous work schedule to support his family and his competitive running career, which included five Olympic Marathon Trials qualifications and two Marine Corps Marathon victories. Read all about that here.
In the last five years, D.C. state championships have had the most drama in the middle, where teams’ fourth and fifth runners battle on the margins while Taylor Knibb or Page Lester run away with the individual title. Spectators got better shows this year, The race this year stayed interesting much, much longer, with Woodrow Wilson sophomore Ava Nicely kicked past Washington Latin sophomore Zoe Edelman in the last tenth of a mile to win the individual title, 19:41-19:43.
Nicely and fourth-place finisher Claire Wigglesworth (20:03) led the way for Wilson upset of defending champion St. John’s, 44-49. It made Wilson the first public school to win a title since the DCSAA championship race started in 2013.