The B-CC cross-country girls’ team now has a new name: State champs.
The team (shown above in a photo courtesy of Julie Billingsley) won the state championship Saturday in a hard-fought race at Hereford High School, riding on the strength of a deep pack of talented runners to narrowly win the competition among the state’s top 21 teams. It was B-CC girls first cross-county state championship since 2003, and the first 4-A win since B-CC joined the largest high school group three years ago.
Just 16 points separated the top five teams, with B-CC beating runner-up and last year’s champion Whitman by eight points. In this team sport, the scores are compiled from the top five finishers – the sum total of the finishing places – and the victor is the one with the lowest total.
“At the end of the race, they knew they pushed as far as they could,” said Coach Chad Young. “They prepared well, raced it hard, left it all there on the course. They had nothing left when they crossed the finish line.”
The boys’ cross-country team also performed well, finishing 12th out of 24 teams, and also edged cross-town rival Whitman.
In the girls’ race, a top pack went out without a single B-CC runner.
But senior co-captain Ava Farrell led a second pack, and close behind her were freshmen Nora McUmber, Abby Fry, and Kat McNeill; juniors Laura Nakasaka and Caroline Leuba; and senior Hallie Jester.
Even though the team had won the county and regional races, the state competition posed new challenges. At one point, Farrell fell. Fry also tripped over a pole on the course, falling far back for a while. And McUmber was in roughly 25th place at the one-mile marker, a typical back-in-the-pack start for her but still it was enough to create knots in Young’s stomach.
The girls then stepped up. McUmber rallied to finished seventh overall, in 20 minutes, 18 seconds. Farrell came in next in 20:47 to finish 14th. Then: Fry, battling back, in 21:02 for 19th; McNeill, 21:21, for 29th; and Nakasaka, 21:31, for 34th. Jester was right behind in 21:33, for 35th place, and Caroline Leuba finished 66th in 22:19.
The finish: B-CC 103, Whitman, 111, Severna Park, 114, Dulaney, 117, and Wootton, 119.
“All five coaches were thinking after the race, ‘Did we do it?’ We were all really excited with how our teams had performed,” Young said. “I think we ran a great race, we ran as hard as we could, they ran with no regrets.”
Young said the girls knew that each of the top five finishes were equally important if they were going to win. “We rely heavily on having a tight pack, and that was key to our success,” he said.
Another key: three of the top five are freshman, a bounty that no one could have predicted at the team’s first practice before the start of the school year.
Young noted a couple of highlights from the race, two involving those freshmen:
On Fry: “Abby ran into a pole and almost fell down, and she was way back in the field for a while. As I was watching her, I didn’t know why she was so far back. But I later learned that the pole, which was marking the course, really slowed her down.”
On Farrell: “About 800 meters from the finish, she slid on some mud, fell down, and got back up. All the girls really ran with a lot of determination, and you could see Ava at the end really leaning into the hill, really gritting her teeth up the hill.”
On McUmber: “Some coaches from other teams commented to me, ‘She was so far back at the mile,’ and then they said how impressed they were with how she gradually picked off the field. She does it so casually it seems. It looks so easy for her to run up the hills, compared to how hard it is for almost everyone else.”
Coach Emily Young missed the race because of a family wedding. Chad Young said she was sad not to be there. He texted her after the results were announced.
“She was extremely excited for the girls and she relayed a message to them about how proud she was of the team,” Chad Young said. “It was great to have a woman on the coaching staff. She related a bit more to the girls, ran with them a bit more. I try to do my best with that, and so did (former coach Nathan) Herchenroeder, but it’s really good to have Emily there.”
In the boys’ race, sophomore Peter Horton led the way for the team, finishing in 17:50, for 45th place. Next was sophomore Nolan Ebner, whom Young called “the star of the day,” finishing in 17:56, for 48th place. Next were: junior Nick McGreivy, 18:02, for 59th place; senior Aidan Hennessey, 18:15 for 73rd; freshman Sam Baker, 18:22 for 77th; sophomore Matt Boden, 18:49, for 99th; and junior Thomas Horton, 18:57 for 102nd.
“Just like the girls, we have a solid pack of boy runners,” Young said. “The spread for the boys, from first to fifth, was just 32 seconds. That’s where the boys have a lot going for them. Yes they are young, and we don’t have a front of the pack runner – yet – but we have guys really competing out there.”
“Peter Horton led the team today,” Young said. “He had a great race. Nolan also ran extremely well and it was great to see him bridge the gap to the top runners on the team. The pack was getting tighter and improving a lot with each race this year.”
Young said one theme throughout the year for both teams was surpassing expectations that outsiders had of them.
“For the girls, a lot of people thought Whitman’s team would be the best all year,” he said. “On the boys’ side, nobody really had much faith in them early in the year. So they had a little chip on their shoulders, wanting to prove people wrong. And that’s what both teams did all year.”
The result for the girls is that there soon will be a new trophy and a new banner at B-CC proclaiming the 2011 team the 4A state champs.
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