Julia Ghiselli didn’t know much about Heather Holt before the Monroe Parker Invitational, except that she was fast.
A lot of people are getting to know Ghiselli now, and she’s pretty fast herself. And Ghiselli was pleased to learn that Holt was also “very nice.”
As last season came to a close in North Carolina, Loudoun Valley’s disappointment felt cushioned by potential.
Though the Vikings failed to make Nike Cross Nationals, they were on the cusp. They made up ground on a team that had beaten them soundly seven weeks earlier and one junior, Peter Morris, had qualified for the finals with another, Colton Bogucki, one spot away. Jacob Hunter, just a sophomore, was 20th.
It’s cross country season again, and even though preseason practices have only been going for a few weeks, thoughts of this Fall’s harriers and their potential have been racing through the minds of coaches and athletes alike.
Following a cross country season that saw one local team and two individuals make the Nike Cross Nationals meet and three qualify for Foot Locker, RunWashington’s coaches panel gathered to select the All-RunWashington Postseason teams. Here are some, but not all, of their highlights. If someone has committed to run in college and we haven’t noted it here, please comment or email at [email protected].
The coaches panel includes Steve Hays, Walt Whitman; Cindy Walls, Bishop O’Connell; John Ausema, Gonzaga; Mike Mangan, Lake Braddock; Scott Silverstein, Winston Churchill; Anthony Belber, Georgetown Day; Kevin Hughes, Georgetown Visitation; Chris Pellegrini, West Springfield and Kellie Redmond, T.S. Wootton.
D.C. cross country runners got to enjoy a new state meet course, Kenilworth Park, which gave them more sure footing and visibility for their championship meet, on which most of the selections were based.
Timmy Bitsberger finished seventh at the D.C.-Maryland Private Schools Championships, after winning the MAC Championships and finishing second at the Georgetown Prep Invitational. Philip Wright made up for a 17th place finish at the private schools championship by notching 45th place at the Nike Cross Southeast meet.
Many of Virginia’s top runners were younger, lots of juniors, and that bodes well for an experienced group of returners in 2017.
Colton Bogucki, junior, Loudoun Valley
Like in Virginia, youth dominated in Maryland, where 10 of the top 15 boys and 12 of the top 15 girls at the Montgomery County Championships were underclassmen.
A pair of sophomores that both wound up in the top five among their class at the state 4A meet, Whitman’s Aaron Bratt matched strides with Wootton’s John Riker at the DCXC Invitational and separated themselves from the rest of the pack in the third mile, with Bratt getting a narrow lean over Riker. Riker got a larger edge, four seconds, at the Montgomery County Championships, before Bratt, along with teammate Josh Engels, put some distance on Riker at the 4A West regional. Though Riker had the edge at the state meet at 11th to Bratt’s 26th with a 13-second margin between the two, the 17 seconds Bratt finished ahead of Riker was worth 48 places, 77th to 125th, at the Nike Cross Southeast meet. If all of that is confusing, suffice it to say they’ll be in for two more years great races between the two, who are the fastest in their class in Montgomery County.
For the second consecutive year, Dalton Hengst of McDonogh nabbed the top spot in the varsity large school race at the Maryland-D.C. Private Schools Cross Country Championships. But this time, it was far from the neck-and-neck race to the finish he experienced last year. He blew away the competition, running 15:29 — a full 44 seconds ahead of second-place finisher Hunter Petrik, of Mount Saint Joseph (16:14), and a 20-second PR over his time last year.
D.C.-Maryland Private School Championships
Abbey Green came up just short in her latest attempt to win a Maryland state cross country title, a rematch with Annapolis senior and 2015 Footlocker finalist Maria Coffin. Yet in the end, the Walter Johnson junior said she could not have scripted the race much more perfectly.
Maryland Athletic Association Championships
Loudoun Valley boys and Lake Braddock girls dominated their races while defending their Virginia state titles, while the James Madison boys and George Marshall girls won their first-ever championships.
Virginia High School League Championships