Photo by John Herzog
The Dominion District saw an epic battle over the new Pocahontas State Park 5K course in Chesterfield between AA's top two ranked runners in #1 Kathleen Lautzenheiser of Midlothian and #2 Kristen Wolfe of James River. It lived up to the hype with the two runners running stride for stride until the final straightaway with Wolfe pulling away in a 18:05 victory for her third straight district title. Lautzenheiser was not far behind in second at 18:09. The Midlothian sophomore led a dominant team performance as while not running at full strength nearly put their top five under 19 minutes with Samantha Dow (5th, 18:40), Amy Witt (6th, 18:51), Erin Stehle (7th, 18:58), and Shannon Roplewski (8th, 19:05) for a team score of 28 points.
The Dominion District could be the home of the state team champions in the Midlothian girls, an individual state champion in either Wolfe or Lautzenheiser, as well as several other individuals capable of earning All-State honors with Cosby's Jenna Moye (3rd, 18:32) and Clover Hill's Abby Badura (4th, 18:36) turning in swift times on Thursday also.
Clover Hill girls had their highest finish at the district meet in a decade with a district runner-up showing to squeak out second place (74 pts) by one point over Cosby (3rd, 75 pts) with James River not far behind in the final regional qualifying spot with 84 points. The last year that Clover Hill finished second or higher in the Dominion District Meet was in 1997, which was the last year the team or any individual qualified for the state meet from the school.
The Midlothian boys made quite a statement in their district meet with three runners under 16 minutes for 5K led by three-time Dominion champion Jason Witt in a winning time of 15:21, while the two finishers were his teammates in senior Michael Hammond and freshmen Brayden Burleigh running huge personal best times of 15:37 and 15:41 respectively. James River sophomore Ted Richardson ran a solid time of 15:55 to discontinue the string of Midlothian finishers with another Midlo freshman coming through with Darren Barlow in fifth place at 16:21. Britt Hockenbery (11th, 16:57) rounded out their top five scoring for Midlothian to win another Dominion title with 22 points. The state meet continues to look like it will be an even closer dogfight with the defending state champions Midlothian and the 2005 state champs and 2006 state runners-up from Oakton.
Regular season district champions in the Manchester boys repeated their 2006 runner-up district meet performance with another as while they had a great front runner in Andrew Duty last year, it was pack effort which helped them match the team performance this year. Only 46 seconds separated their top five led by Justin Thorpe (8th, 16:44) and closed out by Bobby Smith (16th, 17:16).