Racing to the front of a cross country race is typically considered reckless, but with the Burke Lake course soaked by heavy rain at the Monroe Parker Invitational, it was a safer bet than usual.
George Marshall sophomore Heather Holt, among others, wanted to get clear of the rest of the pack to cut down on her tripping and slipping hazards.
Around the athletic fields, through the woods, up and down rolling hills then a wide-open 50 meter uphill sprint to the finish.
“I can go through every inch of it,” said Mike Stubbs, the former cross country coach at Bullis School in Potomac.
With remarkable depth and outright speed, Virginia’s harriers will be the toast of the D.C. area this cross country season, with several primed for big races on the national level. Of the 20 runners selected by the RunWashington coaches panel, 14 run for Virginia schools and another, a D.C. private school athlete, lives in Alexandria.
Maryland lost a few heavy hitters to graduation — Evan Woods, Diego Zarate, Nora McUmber, Kiernan Keller and Lucy Srour — but the state has rapidly-developing young talent moving up.
When Wootton’s Grace Dellapa finished the Maryland 4A West Regional Cross Country Championships, she was elated to have run a personal record 18:51 for sixth overall.
Dellapa knew she’d be representing Wootton once again at the state championships a week later. What she didn’t know was whether she’d be competing alone or with her team. All she could do was wait.
Matthew Hua relished his first season of cross country at J.E.B. Stuart High School. With no prior athletic background, his 24-minute three mile time is a point of pride. Lifelong health problems have been an obstacle in his running career, but they haven’t stopped him from fully participating as part of the team — except maybe in the team dinners.
Matthew’s gastrointestinal system has never functioned normally. He is unable to eat at all and drinks very little. In fact, virtually every one of his bodily systems is compromised. He is deaf in his left ear and his left vocal cord is paralyzed. Underdeveloped lungs have led to chronic conditions such as tracheomalacia (softened cartilage around the trachea) and asthma. He has ongoing orthopedic problems and his immune system is compromised, leaving him susceptible to infection and illness.
For the third straight year, Northern Virginia is sending a runner to the Foot Locker Cross Country Championships with a serious shot at the national title, possibly on the boys’ and girls’ side. Two other area runners will join them in San Diego, making it the 25th time the region has sent multiple qualifiers to the venerated high school national championship.
The same day that Andrew Hunter, Anteneh Girma, Ciara Donohue and Weini Kelati qualified for the Foot Locker final, Rachel McArthur, Alex Corbett and Kate Murphy earned individual trips to the Nike Cross Nationals meet, a team-focused national race in Portland, Ore. Corbett and Murphy each led their Lake Braddock teams to third place finishes, just out of the automatic team berths and the boys an agonizing one point from an at-large invitation.
Oakton’s girls kept everyone guessing all season, including coach Alisa Byers. Into late October, she didn’t know where her defending 6A champion team stood.
“We never really got to race together,” she said. “People had college visits, people on holidays, so we didn’t have everyone racing until the conference meet.”
But for some more fortuitous scheduling, Lake Braddock’s boys may have had “throwback Thursday” on their hands. A throwback to something none of the Bruins were alive to remember.
So they settled for a #sometimeagoSaturday. But that’s all the settling they did.
Evan Woods decisively won the boys 4A Maryland cross country state championships Saturday, snapping rival Diego Zarate‘s winning streak for the season.
Woods, a senior at Walt Whitman, finished in 15:49. Eric Walz, a junior at Dulaney, took second in 15:56 with Zarate coming in third less than a second behind.
For Georgetown Day School’s Tristan Colaizzi, it wasn’t quite the day he envisioned when he toed the line for the Maryland-DC Private Schools Cross Country Championships at the Agricultural History Farm Park in Derwood.
Battling a chronic lung infection for the past few months, Colazzi knew early that he wasn’t going to be the one to challenge Good Counsel junior Jack Wavering for the top spot on this decisive race day. That’s when he tapped teammate senior Aidan Pillard less than a mile into the race and told him he’d have to be the man.