Jesuit girls 4th at NXN; NY’s Manlius wins again

By Lev Rourke
Photos by Kim Spir

The Portland Jesuit girls’ cross-country team finished 4^th, just missing the podium, on a raw, windy morning at the NXN Nike Cross Country Nationals on Saturday at Portland Meadows.

They were led by their star, Annamarie Maag, who finished 15^th. For Jesuit it was quite an achievement because, despite their lofty status in the state – perennial state champions – they were not thought to be in contention in this lofty field. They scored 227 points, 17 points ahead of Wilmington, Del.

The girls’ championship was won, for the fifth year in a row, by the Manlius XC Club, otherwise known as Fayetteville-Manlius, a town near Syracuse, N.Y. F-M was even more dominant than usual, scoring a record-low 27 points and putting three runners in the top six.

In the boys’ competition, the winning team was Arcadia, Calif., which had entered the race as co-favorite in what was considered a tossup year. The Apaches scored 92 points to win a close competition over none other than the Manlius boys, who were 2^nd with 135. Columbus North of Indiana was 3^rd (165), Ft. Collins (Colo.) 4^th (171).

The top boys’ team in the Northwest, North Central (Spokane), finished 6^th with 186, just 20 points from the awards stand and two places ahead of one of the prerace favorites, American Fork (Utah), which faded to 8^th (195).

North Central was led by its two seniors, Casey Adama and Vincent Hamilton, who finished 12-13.

The individual winners were the Illinois phenom Lukas Verzbicas, who took the lead at the halfway mark of the boys’ race and then held off a closing rush by the stunning newcomer Edward Cheserek, of New Jersey, and Rachel Johnson, of Plano, Texas, who passed F-M’s Christie Rutledge with a quarter-mile to go to win the girls’ race.

For Jesuit, Maag’s 15^th-place finish was worth 7 in the team scoring. She ran 19:12, 54 seconds behind the winner. She was joined in the team scoring by fellow seniors Payton Schutte (45) and Amira Joseph (36), junior Adrienne Demaree (66) and freshman Shannon Mahoney (73) along with non-scorers Genevieve Reaume (95) and Olivia Artaiz (140).

The long Oregonian in the boys’ race was Max Runia of Crater, who ran as an independent qualifier and finished 55^th in 17:12. Verzbicas, a budding triathlete who is expected to graduate this spring, his junior season, from Lincoln-Way Central High School, in New Lenox, Ill., ran 15:59.2 to finish two seconds ahead of Cheserek. Cheserek, a 16-year-old sophomore, moved from Kenya to St. Benedict’s Prep in New Jersey over the summer.

Verzbicas and Cheserek battled most of the way with the defending champion, Craig Lutz, of Flower Mound, Texas. Lutz finished 3^rd, 3 seconds behind Cheserek.

Arcadia, located in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains east of Los Angeles, was led by Ammar Moussa, who finished 4^th. They became the first California team in the seven-year history of this event to win either championship.

The other California individual contender, Elias Gedyon, did not fare as well, fading to 31^st, while Jim Rosa, who had beaten his fellow Jerseyan, Cheserek, twice this fall, wound up well back in 78^th place.

For the F-M girls it was yet another impressive performance, as they went 2-4-6-16 with three juniors and a sophomore, meaning it won’t get any easier for their opponents next year either. Their in-state rivals, Kinetic (Saratoga), finished 2^nd, with 104, with Newhall (Saugus, Calif.) 3^rd.

Washington girls ran well, with Amy-Eloise Neale 3^rd and Katie Knight 8^th. Both are sophomores. That state’s top runner, Maddie Meyers, the leading miler in the country last spring, skipped this race, saving herself for next weekend’s Foot Locker race in San Diego.

But this race continued to be the remarkable performance of those girls from New York state. Empire State girls have won all seven titles – five by F-M, one by Hilton and one by Saratoga – and in this year’s race New York girls finished 2-4-6-7-10-11, without the services of yet another New Yorker, Aisling Cuffe, who is merely the Foot Locker favorite next weekend.

Kelsey Margery, #156, a senior from Long Island in New York, was a top-10 contender before getting tripped and falling face first, mouth full of mud. She finished 20th overall.

Colt, Kara and Adam Goucher are pictured at right talking to the F-M girls.