The Midlothian girls and Kathleen Lautzenheiser return as defending champions from last year's invitational division race at the McDonald's X-Country Festival. This weekend will be the first major 5K race of the season for the Group AAA state team and individual champions and both will be given stiff challenges this weekend at Maymont in their "icebreaker" race of the season.
Lautzenheiser's losses to in-state competition have been quite rare over the past year. However, a new challenger may be emerging from a small school in Southwest Virginia and this weekend will likely be the only time until the post-season that two of Virginia's best will be in the same race together. Glenvar junior Megan Marsico, a returning Group A state champion, finished over 45 seconds behind race winner Lautzenheiser in the 2007 Maymont Festival in 20th place. The time spread between the two expects to be significantly less this time out based off of Marsico's performances so far this fall. Marsico is the state leader at 5K (17:59) and 3 miles (16:58) and has broken several course and meet records including Catherine White's meet record time at the Knights Crossing Invite. She is certainly running at the level of an athlete who has a realistic shot of becoming a Foot Locker finalist, which Lautzenheiser happens to be.
The Midlothian junior Lautzenheiser won the 2007 Maymont Festival in 18:41 and with Marsico and others challenging her, could press to break the course of 18:25 set by Marika Walker of Eleanor Roosevelt in 2006. Tatnall's Juliet Bottorf competed in the 2006 race and finished 2nd with a time of 18:28. Bottorf is now a senior and will lead the nationally ranked Tatnall girls from Delaware back to Maymont to mix it up with fellow nationally ranked squads Collins Hill of Georgia and Midlothian.
Collins Hill is making their first trip north to Maymont all the way from Suwanee, Georgia and should make quite a first impression this weekend in Richmond. Midlothian girls are the defending champions in the field, but Collins Hill has to be considered the favorites with a potent lineup which has garnered them a #1 ranking in the Southeast region. Their star runner is senior Amanda Winslow, who has bests on the track of 4:48 for 1600 meters and 10:45 for 3200 meters. In their county championships race this last week, Collins Hill girls had five girls run under 19 minutes for 5K in an dominant team showing. Winslow was a state champion in both events last spring and will be one of the individual race favorites along with Lautzenheiser, Marsico, Bottorf.
Lautzenheiser and Marsico are 2 of 9 runners in the meet ranked among the top 15 in Virginia currently including Lautzenheiser's twin sister VA #7 Leia Lautzenheiser and teammate VA #11 Amy Witt. Also ranked competing at Maymont are Cosby's Jenna Moye, Clarke County's Sophia Holmes, Cosby's Jenna Moye, Bishop O'Connell's Megan Fitzpatrick, and Edison's Myah Hicks.
State ranked teams include VA #1 Midlothian, VA #2 Blacksburg, VA #4 Brentsville, VA #7 Maggie Walker, and VA #10 Hidden Valley. Blacksburg, Brentsville, and Hidden Valley could very well be the three teams who are on the podium after the Group AA state race in November as the same three teams did last year with Blacksburg repeating as state champions. AA squads Blacksburg and Brentsville are both ranked in the Southeast with Blacksburg at #7 and Brentsville at #9 in the region.
The Saratoga Springs girls simply obliterated the field at Oatlands last weekend, but it was the Brentsville girls who emerged as the top team from Virginia in the meet as a distant runner-up to the New York powerhouse squad. Brentsville will look to take advantage of the opportunity this weekend to race against their AA rival Blacksburg.
The Blacksburg girls ran well last year at Maymont with a fourth place finish in a field of 15 teams and will to look recall on those positive past race results this weekend. Blacksburg girls won the Knights Crossing Invite two weeks ago, which included Science Hill of Tennessee.
Science Hill is one of the top teams from the state and will be racing at Maymont along with arguably the best team in Tennessee in Oak Ridge. Oak Ridge girls ran in the shadows of their boys' team last year who qualified for Nike Team Nationals and this year find themselves as the ones in the spotlight as the #6 ranked team in the Southeast currently.
Other Virginia schools to look out for include private school state champions Bishop O'Connell, Group A state champions Clarke County, and AAA ranked Deep Run. Several Southeast "bubble" teams are in the field from other states including Archmere Academy (DE), Cardinal Gibbons (NC), Green Hope (NC), and T.C. Roberson (NC).
Other top individuals in the meet include Annie LeHardy of Hidden Valley, Allison Homer of Blacksburg, Christina Lee of Potomac Falls, Megan Fitzpatrick of Bishop O'Connell, Barbara Strehler of Trinity, Maggie Gentry of Brentsville, Sullivan Parkes of Millbrook, Liz Barclay of Albemarle, Allie Scalf of Science Hill, and Teshika Rivers of Eleanor Roosevelt. There will be several top individuals not competing in the invitational division, but other divisions including the coastal division with the Moye sisters of Cosby, private school state runner-up Barbara Strehler, and William & Mary Invite champ Myah Hicks.