Davis Barry

Here are the top 1,000 times from Great Meadow's non-state course.

Photo by John Herzog The invite mile race at Saturday's Montgomery Invitational in Landover, Maryland is not an automatic qualifier for the Millrose Games high school mile. But when a total of six sub 4:20 milers get together, the winning performance is bound to have at least one runner Madison Square Garden-bound.  Peter Dorrell leads a solid group of Virginians in the 15 person field as two-time state champion at 1600 meters with a 4:15 best against a talented contigent of runners from outside of Virginia.  

 Photo by Ted Plunkett Without a doubt, the Colonial District Meet on Saturday at Pole Green Park will showcase the most depth in the Central Region. The Capital, Central, nor the Dominion will have as strong of a fourth place team squeaking out of the district onto the regional meet as the Colonial District will certainly have in both the boys and girls' races. The Maggie Walker girls and Susannah Piersol come in as favorites, but still are very wary of the potential of the defending district champions in the Douglas Freeman girls to run up to their potential come championship season. An upset by the Freeman girls would almost guarantee a team sweep as the Douglas Freeman boys have shown themselves to the be the second best team in the region this fall behind Midlothian. Freeman is led by one of the individual favorites in Lewis McPherson (pictured above), but Mills Godwin's Brian Welch and Patrick Henry's Davis Barry will make for an entertaining battle.

 More than 80 schools will be represented at Saturday's William & Mary Invitational as many outstanding cross country runners and teams from Virginia, Maryland, DC, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and North Carolina will be spread out among the three varsity race divisions. Leading the individuals will be newly minted stars with Foot Locker South rankings in Virginia private school runners Johns Ross (pictured above by Linda D'Amato) of The Potomac School and Barbara Strehler of Trinity. The Jamestown boys will be the overwhelming team favorites with none of their fellow NTN regionally ranked Virginia squads present to take on the NTN Southeast #3 ranked Eagles on their home course at Eastern State Hospital. Meanwhile, Eastern Region title contenders in the Western Branch and Ocean Lakes girls look to clash for the first time this season with several Northern Virginia teams looking to make things interesting.