Maymont X-Country Festival Coverage

Maymont X-Country Festival
MileSplit Staff

 

 

Invitational Girls Team Champions - Lake Braddock 75 pts (19:45 avg)

 

Invitational Girls Individual Champion - Caroline Alcorta (West Springfield) 17:55

 

Invitational Boys Team Champions - Severna Park (MD) 60 pts (16:19 avg)

 

Invitational Boys Individual Champion - Pat Hally (Salesianum School-DE) 15:44

 

Coastal Girls Individual Winner - Daisy Banta (Maggie Walker) 19:14

 

Coastal Boys Individual Winner - Miles Clikeman (Veritas School) 16:17

 

Silver Girls Individual Winner - Sara Freix (Westfield) 19:23

 

Silver Boys Individual Winner - Johnny Pace (Westfield) 16:36

 

Bronze Girls Individual Winner - Denise Gallant (Pope John Paul the Great) 19:49

 

Bronze Boys Individual Winner - Joshua Munro (J.R. Tucker) 17:39

 

Freshmen Girls Individual Winner - Isabella Ponzi (T.C. Williams) 20:43

 

Freshmen Boys Individual Winner - Ryan Buscaglia (Maggie Walker) 17:36

 

Private School Championship Girls Individual Winner - Megan Wilson (Sidwell Friends School-DC) 18:48

 

Private School Championship Boys Individual Winner - Ryan Speer (North Raleigh Christian-NC) 16:17

 

 

Girls Meet Summary: Caroline Alcorta continues to roll along with her 2013 cross country season, which has been epicly great so far. On Saturday at the Maymont X-Country Festival, Alcorta set a hard pace for the first mile with familiar rival Hannah Christen of Lake Braddock willing to join her for at least the first mile as they exited out of the Maymont Park portion of the course onto the Byrd Park segment of the 5K course. Following the mile mark, the 2012 Foot Locker finalist Alcorta was able to break away from Christen and continue to put distance on the rest the field en route to an impressive 17:55 victory on the hilly terrain at Maymont, which ranks 5th fastest in meet history. The state's top ranked runner will race next at Hagan Stone Park in Greensboro, North Carolina on October 5th.

A pair of runners trailed Alcorta and Christen in their scorching first mile by more than a handful of seconds in Trinity's Molly Breidenbaugh and Cardinal Gibbons School's (NC) Mary Grace Doggett. In the lake loop, both Breidenbaugh and Doggett were able to close distance on Christen to move up into second and third place when they returned back into Maymont Park to be seen by the mass of spectators for the last 1200 meters of the race. The reigning private school state champion Breidenbaugh was a late addition to the race after it was realized that sanctioning rules would allow her to compete since there were no out-of-state teams in the race with rules against competing category 3 schools like Breidenbaugh's school at Trinity Episcopal. With increased competition switching from the coastal to invitational division at Maymont, Breidenbaugh made the best out of the opportunity to grab second place with a time of 18:33. 

Hannah Christen was able to hold onto fourth place individually with a time of 18:43 with teammate Katy Kunc coming up close behind her in 5th place at 18:45 for the tandem to help lead the Lake Braddock girls to a successful repeat as Maymont Festival champions with a team score of 75 points and 19:41 average. The team is still not at full strength or hitting on all cylinders, which is scary for the competition considering they were still 29 points ahead of the runners-up in VA #6 West Springfield (104 pts) as well as ahead of other quality teams in VA #7 Jefferson Forest (3rd, 109 pts) and a state champion caliber team in Cardinal Gibbons School (4th, 128 pts) from North Carolina.  It was the first 5K race of the season for Katie Roche (19th, 20:08), who ran sub 18 minutes for 5K last year for Lake Braddock, but is working herself back into shape after missing action early in season and summer due to injury. Kunc and Sonya Butseva (18th, 20:01) have both really stepped for their team, while the Lake Braddock girls expect to get stronger towards season's end with their returning individual state track champion runners Christen and Roche.

The West Springfield girls made a big jump in the statewide team rankings after a much better team performance at last week's adidas XC Challenge than their season opener at the Monroe Parker Invite when they finished back in the field against their 6A North Region competition. Their team's strength is their front two with Alcorta and Katie Kennedy. Their times were about 40 seconds than the week before going from the racetrack known as WakeMed Soccer Complex in Cary to a much more challenging and slower course at Maymont in Richmond, but they were still high up in the field as the best 1-2 in the meet with Kennedy able to break 19 minutes on a difficult course in 7th place (18:59). Ana Suarez (23rd, 20:13) has also been a key contributor for a West Springfield squad looking to gain valuable experience for the back end of their top 5 in big-time regular season invitationals, so that they are ready to come through in the clutch in championship season.

Facing more competition than they will see all season in their area meets as well as at the state meet in the 4A classification, the Jefferson Forest girls passed the challenging test laid out for them at Maymont with flying colors in finishing 3rd behind only VA #4 Lake Braddock and VA #6 West Springfield. The Lady Cavs saw their front runner Erin Saunders not back down from running against some of the state's best as she garnered a 6th place finish and finished 19 seconds ahead of arguably her toughest challenger for the 4A individual state title in Glen Allen's Katie Sperry (8th, 19:17). The Jefferson Forest girls had the tightest top 5 spread among the top 4 teams at 1:55 as the hilly and narrow segments of the course tends to thin and spread out the field in races at Maymont. Freshmen Madelynn Knight stepped up with the increased level of competition as she ran great in the #2 spot for Jefferson Forest with a 14th place clocking of 19:48.

The coastal division race for girls, which is the second most competitive division in the meet, had a dramatic finish between Grafton's Hope Bloxom and Maggie Walker's Daisy Banta. Bloxom led most of the race and had several seconds on Banta with 200 meters to go, but Banta was able to close faster in the last 50 meters to nip Bloxom just at the line with both runners timed at 19:14. The Maggie Walker girls, ranked #8 in the state of Virgina, could have certainly raced in the invitational division and been competitive, but opted to go coastal, which paid off with a team title as their team score of 51 points put them well ahead of the runners-up from Loudoun County (119 pts). Their team average of 20:11 was closer to 20 minutes thanks to a top 3 nearly all under the time with race winner Banta, freshmen Khloe Pointer (4th, 19:39), and sophomore Emma Call (7th, 20:01). Other impressive individual race winners including DC private school runner Megan Wilson of Sidwell Friends School posting a time in the private school championship race solo which would have put her just outside of the top 5 in the invitational race at 18:48, while Westfield sophomore Sara Freix won the silver/bronze varsity race with ease in 19:23.

Boys Meet Summary: The Severna Park boys of Maryland put on one of the most impressive team displays in meet history as their team average of 16:19 ranks them the fastest ever squad in the invitational race with the 2007 meet champions from Medina of Ohio as the next fastest at 16:28. Their margin of victory over 100 points with VA #5 Patriot claiming second place at 164 points compared Severna Park's low score of 60 points was also meet record setting. More impressive feats considering the number of Nike Cross Nationals and state champion teams which have rolled into this meet over the past half dozen or so years.

Repeat champions from 2012, Severna Park put their entire top 5 remarkable in the top 25 places which was filled with many of the state's top caliber individuals. Ryan Forsyth led his team to victory as the race runner-up in 15:50 followed by teammates Rhys Burgett (4th, 15:57), Dillon Cooley (13th, 16:28), Clay Whitney (16th, 16:33), and Kevin Hines (25th, 16:48).

The individual race champion also came from out-of-state in Salesianum School senior Pat Hally. The defending Delaware state champion Hally along with Severna Park's Forsyth allowed Atlee senior Nathaniel Hall lead the field out through the first mile before moving up and breaking away from Forsyth as well to post a season best time of 15:44 for the win. After finishing 21st in last year's NXN Southeast Regional, the win at Maymont should be great confidence for Hally in his pursuit of making it out to Oregon for the national meet following a track season which he recorded a new 3200 best of 9:14.

The top Virginian finisher in the invitational race was one of the Richmond area's best in Nathaniel Hall. Hall has raced well at Maymont before including a 15:43 performance in last year's race. After a junior year of track marred by injury, Hall had only one invitational race under his belt this fall which was an easy win at the Woodberry Forest Invitational without much top ranked competition in the field. Maymont was a good test for Hall to see if he had returned back to near top form, which his 3rd place effort of 15:56 was a good sign in that direction. In the process, Hall beat many top 25 ranked runners including top 10 ranked Ryan McGorty (VA #6) of Chantilly (6th, 16:12) and Alex Corbett (VA #8) of Lake Braddock (8th, 16:18).

The Central Region does not exist anymore, but old bragging rights were still on the line among the top runners in the Richmond Metro area as not only did Hall finish high up in the field, but as did Deep Run's Matthew Novak (5th, 16:02), and Maggie Walker's Alex Fleckenstein (7th, 16:15). Hall and Novak are both now at 5A classification schools and will see each other against in their conference and regional meets prior to the state meet when championship season rolls along.

The top two ranked teams from Virginia at the Maymont Festival were #2 Chantilly and #5 Patriot with the next wave of teams in a short range either just inside or outside of the top 10 with #9 Glen Allen, #10 Deep Run, #11 Lake Braddock, #12 Western Albemarle, #13 Maggie Walker, and #16 Lafayette. Both Chantilly and Patriot were racing at Maymont for the first time, but both were missing one member from their top five with Chantilly missing a very key piece in #2 runner Dakota Lange who was absent due to the funeral of a grandparent. Despite missing Lange and being inexperienced racing at Maymont, Chantilly showed well to grab 4th place with 189 points as an Ohio school in Centerville earned 3rd place (167 pts). 

The Patriot boys were missing Andrew Derstine, which his absence was felt in the fifth spot as 45 places went by and over 30 seconds from their fourth to fifth at Maymont. Nonetheless, Patriot was able to insert four runners among the top 30 places with Ryan Small (12th, 16:27), Nick Bussian (19th, 16:39), Brendan Lavell (29th, 16:53), and Josh Small (30th, 16:55) to make a great debut in the meet and finish ahead of a huge number of state ranked schools.

The little 2A school with a monster squad in size in Maggie Walker (5th, 203 pts) edged out their Camp Varsity friends from 6A school Lake Braddock (6th, 207 pts) led by last week's William & Mary Invite winner Fleckenstein as their team performance on Saturday should elevate them from their current state ranking at #13 to inside the top 10 as they should leapfrog the four teams ranked higher than them which they defeated at Maymont. 

Miles Clikeman of Veritas School looked strong in the sophomore's 40 second victory in the Coastal Division, while Ryan Speer of North Raleigh Christian clocked a virtually identical timeto Clikeman's  at 16:17 in his win in the private school championship race.

 

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