The Paul VI girls and Bishop Ireton boys enjoyed a great day on a cool weather day at Newport News Park for the Virginia Catholic Schools State Championships as they made the long trip back to Northern Virginia boasting the state team and individual champions from their respective schools.
Lizzie Greene, a state runner-up last year to three-time state champion Taryn Schrader of Bishop Sullivan, was finally able to enjoy a state title herself with Schrader graduated as she was four seconds faster than a year ago in a 19:16 victory. Schrader's kid sister, Colleen Schrader of Bishop Sullivan, was a distant runner-up to the Paul VI senior Greene with a time of 19:52. The Paul VI girls put four runners among the top five places and five among the top ten to take the Catholic Schools state team crown by a margin of 49 points.
There was a much tighter team race and late race drama to determine the boys state champions. Michael Anderson (pictured right by Ted Plunkett) of Bishop Ireton and Wyatt Haas of Benedictine battled to the finish with Paul VI's Blaize Johnson (3rd, 16:42) also in mixing it up with the leaders till the end. Anderson was able to finish stronger to secure a one second win over Haas (2nd, 16:37) in a time of 16:36. Bishop Ireton's Michael Anderson has made a big leap in one year to go from a 28th place 18:19 finish in last year's Catholic Schools State Meet with his dramatic 16:36 victory going from third to first in the final 400 meters.
His performance even caught his coach Brad Byrnes by surprise. "Well, he had gotten stronger over the past few weeks and a lot bolder in his race strategy, but I really didn't expect his time today. To be honest my chips were on Haas or Johnson." However, Coach Byrnes saw his runner and 800 meter specialist Anderson running more relaxed with 400 meters to go and knew he was going to pull out the upset win.
Anderson's individual win also helped the Bishop Ireton boys claim their first state title since 1986 by a narrow margin of 3 points against host school Peninsula Catholic (54 pts) with a team score of 51 points and team average of 17:28 on the Newport News Park 5K course. "It's a been a long time! I really can't believe what happened today. It hasn't really sunk in yet," said an estatic Coach Byrnes.