Oakton Junior Allie Klimkiewicz is still buzzing from her team’s first state cross country title last fall. She has raced the VHSL 6A State Cross Country Championships every year since she was a freshman, but the team win made this year extra special.
“It feels very unreal,” she said. “We had the talent this year and everything just came together. We all shared [the win] together. I think our team dynamic was really good this year. Everyone just clicked.”
0.3 seconds.
That’s how much time separated Chase Weaverling, a senior at Poolesville High School, from the coveted 10th position at the Northeast Footlocker Championships Nov. 30. The top 10 finishers in each of the country’s four divisions -South, Midwest, West and Northeast, held in Van Cortland Park in New York City – advance to the highly touted Footlocker National Championship held in San Diego two weeks later.
Chris Hoyle, a senior who runs for Gonzaga College High School in Washington, is a team captain who leads by example.
In addition to being the top runner on the team this year, the Oak Hill, Va., resident mentors younger runners, calling them during schools breaks to make sure they’re staying in shape, and tries to create the same inclusive atmosphere he found on the team when he joined as a freshman.
Alex Corbett inadvertently fell in love with running while running the mile in gym class in middle school.
“That’s when I discovered I had talent,” he recalled during the Ram Invitational at Robinson Secondary School on Dec. 4.
Congratulations of each of the members of our All-RunWashington High School Cross Country postseason team.
Check back here to see profiles of each of the 10 men and women selected by a panel of coaches from around the region.
Megan Wilson didn’t start high school planning to run cross country. In fact, she spent her first two years at Sidwell Friends School in the District playing club volleyball. Though she comes from a running family – her father ran at Columbia and her mom at Villanova- Megan had other interests and didn’t feel pressured by her parents to follow in their footsteps. By the start of her junior year, however, she decided to join the cross country team, in part because of her close relationship with coach Gaby Grebski and the team’s strong camaraderie.
[button-red url=”http://www.runwashington.com/2013/12/16/runwashington-high-school-cross-country-team/” target=”_self” position=”left”] More of the All-RunWashington team [/button-red] Despite her relatively late start to the sport, Wilson had an outstanding debut season in 2012, winning the DC. .State Athletic Association championships by over two minutes and placing third in the IAC/ISL/MAC championships. She improved upon those performances this year, winning the Lake Forrest Invitational, the D.C. state meet and the Maryland/D.C. Private School championships. She looks to continue her strong showing in outdoor track this spring before taking her performances to the next level and competing next year for Stanford.
If anyone knew what the Footlocker Cross Country Championships were all about, it was Sean McGorty.
In 2011, as a Chantilly High School junior, he earned a trip to San Diego with a sixth place finish in the south regional meet. He had heard all about the race from Ahmed Bile, an Annandale Atom making his second trip. Two of his high school mentors who ran for Chantilly, Brad Siragusa and Eric Post, were Footlocker veterans with plenty of advice. As proud as they all were, nobody was quite as thrilled that he’d be staying at the Hotel del Coranado as his mother. And it wasn’t just because she was proud of her son.
In that first stretch of a cross country race, everything seems within control. Runners bide their time, some try to bank a few seconds, maybe break the field, or do something otherworldly. When all of those plans come together, it’s chaos. And out of chaos, at the Virginia High School League, four teams wound up at the top of the standings in the boys 6A race, separated by four points, with Chantilly on top. Oakton’s Jack Stoney won the individual title in 15:24, a personal record.
In the 5A race, Thomas Edison’s Louis Colson continued his dominant year, winning in 15:06. It’s the first year the state’s reclassification has split up schools into six races, versus the previous three. 6A results 5A results
The girls 6A races at the Virginia High School League cross country championships were short on drama, but featured plenty of firsts for Northern Virginia programs.
West Springfield’s Caroline Alcorta pulled away from the pack within seconds of the start and bolted to a 29-second lead by the first mile on her way to a 39-second win over Lake Braddock’s Hannah Christen, setting a course record in 17:13 at the Great Meadows in Fauquier County. In winning the 6A title, the first state meet after redistricting ended the former three-classification system, she ran was 32 seconds faster than she ran for second place last year, and her first cross country state title.
Scaling the final steep hill towards the finish line of the D.C. State High School Cross Country Championships at Fort Dupont Park in Washington D.C., Georgetown Day School teammates Tristan Colaizzi and Aiden Pillard impulsively decided to finish the race together, hand in hand. Having trained and raced side by side all season, often finishing within seconds of each other, made racing down the final straight away together at the DC championship meet even more special. Though they finished with an identical time of 17:34 for the 5k race, Pillard, a junior, was officially declared the winner, and later MVP of the boys race. Colaizzi, a sophomore, was happy for Pillard and with his own performance, saying, “It hurt, but it hurt good, and there’s nothing better than running next to teammates.”