West Springfield sophomore Caroline Alcorta, competing in her first season of cross country, won her first invitational race on Saturday at the Hagan Stone Classic in Greensboro, North Carolina. Alcorta had an amazing freshmen season of outdoor track, running just at 11 minutes for 3200 meters and earning All-State honors. Splitting double time with field hockey this fall, Alcorta went from running 18:38 for three miles at Monroe Parker to running 18:41 for 5000 meters on the Hagan Stone Park course which followed up a strong fourth place run last weekend in the invitational divison at Maymont. Trailing Alcorta 19 seconds later was West Springfield teammate Maddie Wittich, who took runner-up honors with a time of 19 minutes flat. The 1-2 finish from Alcorta and Wittich keyed the VA #9 ranked team West Springfield in taking home the title over one of the best teams from Tennessee in Science Hill High School with 37 points.
Finishing third in the 16 team championship race division was the St. Catherine's girls, who should once again be in the mix in the private school state championships later this fall at Woodberry Forest. In the boys' race, West Springfield boys nearly matched their female counterparts with a win themselves, but fell short by only 11 points as runners-up. The Spartains averaged 17:14 as a squad with a spread under 1 minute.
