The winning Lake Braddock girls team tallied 70 points with AA power Western Albemarle scoring 93 points for the runnerup spot as they edged Jefferson and their third place total of 99 points. There was a large split to the fourth place score of 204 points by Brooke Point. Langley was a close fifth at 204 points with Westfield (7th; 216) and W.T. Woodson (8th; 220) also securing top ten team finishes.
In the girls individual race, Swain of Lake Braddock, North Stafford\'s Kristyn Shiring and Katie Endres from Potomac Falls were the front running trio at the mile mark with C.D. Hylton\'s Jemissa Hess, Claire Whitenack of Albemarle and Forest Park\'s Beth Fahey the next trailing trio about ten seconds behind.
Swain and Shiring had pulled to a seven second lead over Endres at the two mile mark with Swain then making a strong surge against Shiring with about a mile to go on the fairly flat 5,000 meter (3.1 mile) course. Swain\'s quick move proved decisive as she continually moved away from the highly rated Shiring to a sixteen second victory with the Lake Braddock junior clocking 18 minutes, 35 seconds and Shiring second in 18:51.
Hess, the defending Northwest Region champion, rallied over the last mile from fifth place to third overall in 18:59 with Whitenack fourth (19:01) and Endres fith in 19:19.
Jefferson\'s Sarah Levine led the Colonials squad to their third place team trophy with her sixth place finish in 19:23 as the next highest scorer from the region with Lake Braddock freshman Sara Rothe (13th; 20:14) and W.T. Woodson\'s Jenica Semler in 14th place also among the top fifteen award winners.
Lake Braddock coach Mike Mangan said of the team\'s winning effort, \"it was a good performance for this time of the year. I don\'t know if we can challenge Robinson but if we continue to run well it will force Robinson to have to work hard to beat us. A big help early this season has been having juniors Kelly Dick and Abbey McGrath really pulling the freshman runners along.\"
Mangan said of Swain\'s performance, \"the pre-race plan was to have Kelly make her move right around the two mile mark to go for the victory. She followed through with that strategy and it worked well for her.\"
The boys race saw Jefferson win their second invitational of the season with their score of 57 points. The Colonials certainly look to be one of the stronger teams in the state as they defeated one of the Central Region\'s standout teams in Maggie Walker (formerly Thomas Jefferson) Governor\'s School which was second with 78 points and also Northwest Region power Albemarle (3rd; 90 points).
Westfield continued their strong early season showing in fourth place at 142 points with Langley (6th; 171), Lake Braddock (7th; 206) and W.T. Woodson (10th; 337) also coming up with top ten team finishes from the Northern Region.
The individual titleist was John Piersol of Maggie Walker, the defending Central Region champion who overtook Jefferson sophomore Christo Landry in the final 200 meters to win in 15:49 with Landry a close second at 15:51.
The race started with Matt Gutridge of Caroline County setting a blistering early pace before settling in and going 4:55 through the first mile with Piersol, Landry, Brandon King of Western Branch, Jefferson junior Keith Bechtol and Lake Braddock\'s Steve Hoogland within 20 meters of the lead.
The two mile mark was hit at about 10:10 with Piersol and Bechtol vieing for the lead with Gutridge in third, King in fourth and Landry in fifth and still about 20 meters off the lead. Landry then started to move towards the front and moved into first with about 600 meters to go. Landry then extended the lead to about 15 meters with about 400 meters to go and only Piersol in contention with Piersol then mounting a furious charge in the last 200 meters for the win.
Piersol said, \"the course was pretty flat but pretty nice. I didn\'t know he (Landry) was near me until he passed me. He gapped me on the hill (400 meters to go) and I didn\'t think I would get him but I was able to find something in the last 200 yards and picked it up while his pace seemed to stay the same.\"
Jefferson coach Matt Ryan said, \"the team ran a pretty solid race but we have to work on the spread between the first and fith runners; it\'s about a minute and that is too much. That means the guys at three through five will have to really work because Christo is continually raising the bar at the number one spot and Keith Bechtol at number two is probably as hard a worker as there is in the state. Although we are pleased with the results to date, the committment is to be running well in November.\"
Although Landry was the only region runner in the top five, the next four spots went to area runners with Bechtol sixth in 16:22 as he just held off Westfield\'s Brian Buckland (7th; 16:23) with Lake Braddock\'s Hoogland 8th in 16:26 and Langley\'s Billy Bylund ninth at 16:29. Jefferson put their top five runners all among the top twenty finishers as Tarik Jones was 13th (16:38), Dan Walsh 17th (16:47) and Joe Bylund 19th (16:48).