St. John’s swept the team and individual titles, with senior Chris Tetter making a big jump in the last few months and freshman Meredith Gotzman won her first 5k. See more photos here.
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DCXC
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Woodrow Wilson’s boy edged the School Without Walls and the Tiger girls finished comfortably ahead of Bell. Roosevelt junior Fajr Kelly won the girls’ race by more than two minutes. See more photos here.
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It wasn’t a race she ran that showed Walter Johnson coaches Tom Martin and Ashley St. Denis that Jenna Goldberg was serious about cross country.
It was a race she wasn’t going to be running. A JV runner her freshman year, Goldberg was not on the Walter Johnson roster for the state meet. But when the team made arrangements to go up to Hereford High School to practice on the course a week before the championships, Goldberg asked if she could come along.
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In the past few years, Loudoun Valley has built tremendous depth with a large team that typically wins most, if not all, team titles at different invitationals – varsity and junior varsity. Kevin Carlson has seen that from the Vikings’ varsity team since 2016.
But with that depth come some tough calls when the numbers crunch for championship races, and that’s where the Vikings found themselves last November. With another Nike Cross Southeast title in hand, the harder task was figuring out who would represent the team as it went to defend its 2017 title. Carlson finished 113th overall that year — 7th for Loudoun Valley, but in the scoring five for all but three other teams.
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If you see Garrett Suhr running the 100 meters this spring, you’ll know things are going really well for him.
By Suhr’s retelling, Richard Montgomery Coach Davy Rogers promised him that if he got through three seasons — outdoor track in 2019, cross country in 2019 and the upcoming indoor track season, he would be allowed to compete in the marquee sprinting event.
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Bethany Graham wasn’t sure what to make of Taryn Parks. The senior from Greencastle-Atrim in Pennsylvania has been a mainstay at the Foot Locker Cross Country Championships since her freshman year and had run 4:37 for 1600 meters over Memorial Day weekend. Graham ultimately chose not to change her plans for the Oatlands Invitational.
“I knew she raced pretty similar to me, that she liked to get out,” Graham said. “I decided to just run normally and see what happened. I didn’t want to change too much because she was in the race.”
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Successful partnerships between coaches and runners all involve some give and take. Regardless of how established a coach is, two-way communication is crucial to keeping runners healthy and improving. For a new coach whose native sport is soccer, like Lauren Brewer at Broad Run, having a runner who knows the ropes helps a lot.
Senior Ellie Desmond has been doing her fair share of teaching.
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Bryce Lentz was frustrated with his dead legs. After he dropped a place to finish third at last week’s Pole Green Invitational, he aired his bodily grievances to his coach Dave Davis.
“I really don’t care, it’s September,” Davis recalled saying to Lentz, who is starting his junior year at Colgan High School. “The leaves are still green and you’re running 65 miles a week. Nothing matters.”
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Bethany Graham has plenty of reasons to fuel her running with frustration.
Despite brilliant starts to the past two cross country seasons, she hasn’t made the state meet since her freshman year. Stress fractures in 2017 and a sprained ankle in 2018 have kept her out of postseason racing.
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Race car driver and raconteur Reece Bobby said it best, “If you ain’t first, you’re last.”
Sean Stuck knows that. At last spring’s Virginia 6A track championships, he brought up the rear in the 1600 meters, finishing just 16 seconds out of first place. Fortunately, he won the 3200 meters.