Severna Park Claims Victory at Cross Country Meet

The field behind Arundel High School was flooded with almost 600 runners from 10 county schools on Tuesday evening as Arundel hosted its first cross country meet of the season.

This was a rescheduled event due to last week’s extreme weather.  Effects of the storm were still evident in the deep puddles lining the starting field and the muddy legs of the runners as they emerged from the woods.

Because of the number of runners at the meet, the field of runners for both boys and girls was divided into two races each.

The first two races were run by Chesapeake, Broadneck, Old Mill, North County and Northeast.  Broadneck won both the boys and girls races with the boys taking 10 of the top 15 spots and the girls sweeping the top five spots.

With Michelle Nelson and Ashley Hayes of Severna Park taking a commanding lead within the first half mile of the second girls’ race, the team results were never in doubt. Jodie Clouser, Tracy Vanderkolk and Anna Bollino were close behind the lead runners, securing the rest of the top five places and a meet win.

Arundel runner Karlie Frank had a great showing coming in in the top 20 with a smoking 23:09:11.

The boys’ race proved to be more exciting with Arundel’s Zach Zatyko and South River’s Alec Goebel battling it out for first place much of the race. In the end, Zatyko used a strong kick to pull almost fifteen seconds ahead of Goebel as the first runner across the line in 17:46:24.

In cross country, the overall win is determined by the top seven runners for each team. Severna Park took the victory with Dillon Cooley, Ian McConnell, Dunavan Knight, J.P. Hussey, Cal Moreno, Chad Callahan and Jeffrey Patrick earning 31 points from seven spots in the top 15. South River came in second with 37 and Arundel came in a strong third with 76 points.