While the Blacksburg girls and boys became the first school ever to sweep the invitational team titles in meet history at Maymont on Saturday, the Hidden Valley girls (pictured by Hetzal Hartley) appear to be making up ground on their River Ridge district rival as shown with their impressive showing at the Greensboro Invitational. Meanwhile, the Osbourn Park girls and Oakton boys strengthened their Group AAA state title hopes with team titles at the largest meet in the state of Virginia, the Oatlands Invitational, with a total of 3,047 finishers. More coverage to come from this past weekend's meets.
Oatlands Invitational
September 26, 2009 @ Oatlands Plantation in Leesburg, VA
Hosted by Loudoun County
Photo by Tom Hoerner
The Oatlands Invitational was truly a monster meet with a total of 3,047 finishers spread across four varsity races and eight junior varsity races at the Oatlands Plantation in Leesburg to earn the claim as the biggest cross country meet in the state of Virginia. The rain which blanketed much of the East Coast this past weekend held up enough on Saturday for a solid times on a challenging Oatlands 5K course.
The Osbourn Park girls continued to stay on their hot streak of great team performances as they followed up their victory at the Brentsville Relays against AAA #1 ranked Midlothian with a 34 point margin of victory at the Oatlands Invitational. The West Potomac girls were second with 150 points.
Osbourn Park's top runner Ariel Karabinus picked up a great amount of confidence in her chances to return as a Northwest Region individual champion this fall after winning in 2007 and then placing second in 2008 to Mountain View's Katilyn Davis. In a race which featured the top four ranked Northwest Region runners in the state at Oatlands with Karabinus, Davis, Brooke Point's Katherine Walker, and Stafford's Hannah Lowery, Karabinus ran away from them all in a 18:30 win.
Only Cosby sophomore Megan Moye was able to break up the Northwest Region runners up front with a fourth place effort of 18:54 with Davis (2nd, 18:47), Walker (3rd, 18:53), and Lowery (5th, 18:55) all breaking 19 minutes and finishing among the top 5.
With three runners among the top 12, the West Potomac girls were in position to knock off Osbourn Park after being one of the handful of higher ranked teams which Osbourn Park had defeated at Brentsville. Julianne Bigler (8th, 19:15), Sarah Jane Underwood (10th, 19:28), and Kelsey Rosenberg (12th, 19:30) all ran strong up front for Coach Don Beeby, but Osbourn Park was able to distance from them in the #4 and #5 spots with Brandy Wybersky in 34th place and Kelly O'Toole in 50th place for Osbourn Park coach Mike Schuster.
The Oakton boys, ranked #3 in Group AAA, were able to get revenge on #2 ranked Mountain View, after losing on a sixth runner tiebreaker earlier in the season at the Chancellor Invitational. There was not that much separation between them especially in varsity A division with a total of 39 schools competing, but Oakton opened a little bit of breathing room with a team score of 143 points compared to Mountain View's 157 points. Oakton beat Mountain View in every position except for the #5 runner spot, which Mountain View gained 10 points on.
Photo by Ted Plunkett
Oakton had the race runner-up as their first finisher in Andrew McCullen (15:53), who had challenged West Virginia's best Cody Pelliccioni (15:49) of Morgantown for the win and averaged 16:43 as a team compared to Mountain View's 16:54 average.
Two of the Northern Region's best were racing up in front of the field with McCullen and Centreville's Yazid Zouamia. Zouamia joined McCullen and Pelliccioni as the only other runner to break 16 minutes in the race with a time of 15:58 for third. Chantilly's Chris Foley did not run at Oatlands after originally being scheduled to run, so that left McCullen and Zouamia missing an opportunity to race against the top ranked runner in their region.
Drew Paisley and his Ocean Lakes team bypassed competing at essentially the Eastern Region pre-meet, the Chesapeake Invite, to tackle the hills at Oatlands and Paisley ended up with a respectable fourth place finish.
Results:
- JV FR/SO Boys
- JV FR/SO Girls
- JV JR/SR Boys
- JV JR/SR Girls
- Varsity A Boys
- Varsity A Girls
- Varsity B Boys
- Varsity B Girls
Photo Gallery by Nicoll Knudsen
Below are the performances entered for the meet that met the national silver standard.
37 National Elites.
U.S. Army X-Country at Maymont
September 25, 2009 - September 26, 2009 @ Maymont Park XC Course in Richmond, VA
Hosted by Richmond Sports Backers Timing/Results: RunHigh.com 
Official Meet Web Site
Photo by John Herzog
The Blacksburg High School program is on top of the world right now. At least in Virginia high school cross country and possibly beyond. The Blacksburg boys and girls became the first school in Maymont Festival history to win both team titles in the invitational division.
The Blacksburg girls won by a wide margin against nationally ranked and Nike Cross Nationals regular Tatnall of Delaware, while the Blacksburg boys were able to win despite a strong challenge from Pennsylvania's Baldwin High School and off races from their top returning runners George Carter and Matt Howard.
With Great American (scheduled for next week) returning as a big draw for teams in the Southeast Region with its return to the state of North Carolina after the meet went in decline of importance in its years in Hoover, Alabama, the team fields at Maymont might have not as been as strong as past years, but the individual races were once again loaded and the story of the meet.
The boys invitational race winner was decided in the final strides as a pack of a half dozen runners together with half of a mile to go broke down to only two in William & Mary Invite champion Corey Puffett of DeMatha Catholic and Blake Williams of Northern Durham. Williams with a little faster middle distance legs than Puffett was able to pull ahead in the end for a 15:32 win and Puffett in a close second at 15:33. Williams just missed the course record of 15:31 set by Peter Dorrell of Blacksburg in his 2007 win.
The entire top six finishers in the boys' race were all under 16 minutes on a moderately challenging and hilly Maymont course, which had three of Virginia's best among that six in Jamestown's Colin Mearns (VA #1 ranked), James River's Ted Richardson, and Fairfax's Kevin Dowd. Of the three, Dowd was the least considered to be the top finisher. Dowd, injured during the 2008 cross country season, defeated Virginia's #1 ranked Mearns and Group AAA state title contender Richardson with a third place finishing time of 15:37. His time is just two seconds behind the Maymont performances by two of the past three AAA state cross country champions in Mike Spooner (2006) and Jason Witt (2007).
Photo by John Herzog
Meanwhile, the Stevens twins of Blacksburg have been a class above the rest of the runners in the state of Virginia, so with one of North Carolina's best in Carolyn Baskir (East Chapel Hill) in the race with a recent low 17 minute 5K performance coming in, a serious challenger was expected for the twins. Baskir and the twins re-entered Maymont Park from Byrd Park running together. Baskir was able to shake Joanna Stevens first and then lastly Kathleen Stevens for a second win in 17:42 and significantly drop the year old record of 17:55 held previously by Megan Marsico, a Foot Locker finalst last year at Glenvar High School.
Kathleen Stevens ran a great race despite finishing second as she ran under Marsico's meet and course record time in a personal best time of 17:44. Twin sister Kathleen third in 18:04, matching her time from Knights Crossing Invite two weeks ago on a more difficult course at Maymont. The top three finishers at Maymont all showed they are Foot Locker finalist caliber runners.
However, Foot Locker Nationals will not likely be in the cards for the Stevens twins as their win at Maymont against Tatnall (DE) makes it more apparent this team is very capable of qualifying for Nike Cross Nationals later in the season out of the Southeast region. The Blacksburg girls tallied a team score of 76 points and team average of 18:51 on the Maymont course as rounding out their top five were Sarah Dorrell (18th, 19:09), Leah Fitchett (19th, 19:11), and Hannah Brown (37th, 20:09). Blacksburg put four runners ahead of Tatnall's second finisher, but Coach DeMarco would likely prefer a smaller gap, more depth and security after their fourth runner as Tatnall's seventh runner was only 20 seconds and six places behind Blacksburg's fifth runner.
The West Springfield girls stepped up with a big team performance to snab the third place team trophy at Maymont with 161 points and finish ahead of hometown team and last year's AAA state runners-up Maggie Walker (4th, 171 pts).
The Blacksburg boys did not have a single individual finish among the top 15, but their top four certainly came in a quick and short wave after that. Only 11 seconds and 7 places separated Caman Skelton (16th, 16:30), Frank Locascio (17th, 16:30), Matt Howard (21st, 16:39), and George Carter (23rd, 16:40).
The Baldwin boys out of Pennsylvania gave them their toughest challenge to date this season and Morristown-West of Tennessee raced much better against them than two weeks ago at Knights Crossing, but Blacksburg still found a way to win with a team score of 98 points. Through four runners, Blacksburg and Baldwin were tied with 65 points and Morristown-West in third with 75 points.
Blacksburg junior Zach Link ended up being the performer of the day for Coach DeMarco with his 36th place finish of 17:10 putting many places ahead of Baldwin or Morristown-West's fifth runners to get the victory for his top ranked squad. The remaining top five finishing teams were all out-of-state with Cherokee of New Jersey (4th, 182 pts) and Salesianium School of Delaware (5th, 189 pts).
Despite having one of their top runners both sporting protective boots cheering their team on the sidelines, both Group AA squads Grafton (6th, 201 pts) and Western Albemarle (7th, 203 pts) ran well despite not being at full strength. With both schools having state meet podium aspirations though, Grafton will need #2 runner David Gunnerson to return as well as Western Albemarle needing the services of #1 runner Derek Armstrong.
Results:
- Bronze Boys
- Bronze Girls
- Coastal Boys
- Coastal Girls
- Freshmen Boys
- Freshmen Girls
- Invitational Boys
- Invitational Girls
- JV Private School Girls
- JV Red Boys
- JV Red Girls
- JV White Boys
- JV White Girls
- Open 5K
- Private School Girls
- Silver Boys
- Silver Girls
Below are the performances entered for the meet that met the national silver standard.
53 National Elites.