Patriot District:
Hayfield, led by the one-two finish of junior Melissa Dewey and senior Morgan Phelan, captured the girls team title while on the boys side, Lake Braddock was the team winner with West Springfield senior Steve Tobin the individual champ at the Patriot District Campionships held at Burke Lake Park on Wednesday, October 22.
Hayfield's Dewey, who has not been defeated by a fellow Northern Region runner thus far this season, posted a very good time of 17 minutes and 52 seconds over Burke Lake's 2.98 mile course in sunny but windy conditions with temperatures in the low to mid 50's.
Dewey improved her time from the Monroe Parker meet of seven weeks ago on the same course by fourteen seconds while second place finisher Phelan, last year's AAA state meet runnerup, sliced 40 seconds off her Monroe Parker time with her Patriot second place time of 18:14.
Hayfield scored 36 points for their victory with the Hawks also getting solid performances from senior Neela Balkisoon (6th; 19:07) and the freshmen trio of Amy Weber (11th; 19:16), Shannen Clevand (16th; 19:34) and Gretchen Wendleberger (17th; 19:35).
Lake Braddock notched second place with 49 points and swept the third through fifth spots with junior Kelsey Snowden (18:40), sophomore Erin Klein (18:44) and junior Kelley Sherrard (19:01).
Robinson finished third with 69 points led by their closely bunched threesome of sophomore Erin Hickey (7th; 19:08), sophomore Jennifer Hovland (8th; 19:10) and senior Vicki Moore (9th; 19:11) while West Springfield grabbed the final region team qualifying berth, scoring 86 points for fourth place with sophomore Andrea Mueller their top finisher (10th; 19:15).
The boys team race, in what is virtually a highly competitive affair every year, never developed as Lake Braddock placed their top five runners among the top eleven finishers to win easily with 37 points. The Bruins were paced by junior Brad Clark, who toughed his way to second place at 15:42.
Following Clark, the Bruins put their next four runners within 20 seconds of each other with the all senior quartet of Danny Howick (6th; 15:54), Anthony Internicola (8th; 15:57), Scott Gordon (10th; 16:06) and Jason Lex (11th; 16:14).
West Springfield finished second in the team scoring with 72 points and claimed the individual honors once again, this time with Steve Tobin. The Spartans senior took the lead from the outset and held an 80 meter lead at the two mile mark on his way to a solid time of 15:22.
Tobin's time was a big improvement from his Monroe Parker performance where he had finished just 13th at 16:02 and the Spartans' runnerup spot was also greatly aided by by sophommore Kris Benton's strong surge in the second half of the race which netted him fourth place overall in 15:48.
Robinson finished third with 87 points paced by senior Sam Rhodes (5th; 15:53) as they just edged Hayfield's fourth place total of 89 points. The Hawks had talented junior Brian Fussell run his best race of the season (3rd; 15:43) and senior Sean Riley in seventh place at 15:57 while T.C. Williams claimed an individual qualifier for the regional meet to be held Thursday, October 30 at Burke Lake Park (Girls-3:30; Boys-4:15) in senior Rufus Peabody (9th; 16:01).
National District:
Mount Vernon rode the winning performance of senior Ermias Regassa to win the boys team title while the Washington-Lee girls won quite probably their first ever girls cross country team title with Yorktown senior Katie Read the individual champ.
In the boys race, Regassa was in a stride for stride battle with Wakefield's Mudasar Haidat and Bryan Kirby of Edison for the first two miles. Kirby, the eventual third place finisher, (16:26) fell off the pace shortly thereafter and Regassa was able to gradually lengthen his lead over Haidat from the 2.5 mile point on to win by 40 meters in 15:56.
Mount Vernon won a tight team battle which saw the top three teams separated by less than 10 points with Matthew Thoman the next finisher for the Majors behind Regassa in eighth place at 17:20.
Wakefield was second with 72 points largely due to Haidat's runnerup finish (16:04) and Mike Robertson in ninth place (17:24).
Washington-Lee was a close third (74 points) led by Matt Dinan (5th; 17:04) and Bareket Haile (6th; 17:10) while Yorktown claimed the fourth and final automatic regional team qualifying slot with 96 points with their top two finishers Benjamin Bartlett (10th; 17:29) and Fabian Rowe (11th; 17:30).
Besides Kirby of Edison, others making the regional meet on an individual but not team basis were Stuart's David Schlaseman (4th; 16:48) and William Santos (14th; 17:37) along with the Falls Church duo of Ariel Ortiz (7th; 17:19) and Eddie Morrison (12th; 17:31).
In the girls race, although Washington-Lee produced a string of good distance runners in the late '70's and early '80's, it appears that there is a very good chance that the Generals have won their first ever district cross country title and if not, certainly the first in a very long time.
W-L put three runners among the top six and all six of their competing runners earned all district honors as they won with 29 points. The Generals were strong at the top with Ellen Childress (2nd; 19:03) and Emily Gousen (3rd; 19:10), solid in the middle with Candida Ayala (6th; 20:08) and Margaret Oates (7th; 20:22) and cetainly respectable after that with Lane Wollerton (11th; 20:34) and Kallie Sims (13th; 20:42).
Perennial National District champ Yorktown put three runners in the top five as they finished second with 44 points. The Patriots received another strong performance from senior Katie Read as she led from the outset and cruised to a 40 second victory in posting a fine time of 18:23.
Yorktown also had two other runners below 20 minutes with junior Becca Shinners in fourth place (19:51) and Emma Causey grabbing fifth place in 19:59.
Mount Vernon was third with 84 points led by Brandi Tish (8th; 20:33) and Safiya Myers (10th; 20:34); Edison took the fourth qualifying spot with 106 points as the Eagles had Karen Dickerson (14th; 20:45) and Cynthia Bergstrom (15th; 20:53) as their top finishers and Wakefield had two individual qualifiers in Jasmine Riley (9th; 20:33) and Rebecca Zimmerman (12th; 20:37).