2015 Crossfire Invitational - Boys
Nick Tilson is certainly to make sure the Liberty program gets to keep some of the first place hardware that they purchased for the Crossfire Invite. Tilson, the top returnee from last year's race when he placed fourth as a sophomore in a time of 17:25, will be looking to knock considerable time off that performance 12 months later on Tuesday. Tilson is coming off a big individual win at the Bull Run Invite with a 16:23 performance on the Hereford 3 mile course in the small school race.
Tilson's top individual competition at the Crossfire Invite should come from Oakland Mills junior Joey Navarro, Westminster sophomore Brandon Arbaugh, and trio of runners from Winters Mill. Navarro especially could be troublesome for Tilson even on his familiar home course as Navarro beat him earlier in the season at the Howard County Invite when Navarro clocked a PR of 16:24 for fourth place. Tilson got him back though as the Bull Run Invite and gapped him by 22 seconds in the small schools race as Navarro finished 3rd in 16:45.
Despite being only an underclassmen, Westminster's Brandon Arbaugh has shown a willingness to put himself up near the front early on in many invitational races including a third place finish most recently in the large school race at Bull Run along with a runner-up finish to Tilson at the Mountain Run last month. His older brother Bradley is also a returning top 15 finisher from last year's Crossfire Invite.
Winters Mill has three guys who really took advantage of a fast 5K course at the Blazers Invite a few weeks back to really put down some impressive times collectively between Taylor Russell, Sean Gore, and Devon Caples ranging from 16:27 to 16:44.
Expecting the team race to come down between MD #19 Westminster, MD #25 Winters Mill, Oakland Mills and the defending meet champions plus host school in Liberty. Westminster looked the best among the three two Saturdays ago at the Bull Run Invite when they finished runner-up in the large school division and 13th overall in the results merge.
Meanwhile, the Oakland Mills boys won the small school race division later in the day and the Winters Mill boys were only 2 points away from winning the medium schools race division, so will be interesting to see how all these teams do racing head to head. Don't forget about Liberty though as well led by individual race favorite Tilson and their talented freshmen Daniel Saxon who may be ready to go 1-2 with Tilson in the race.
2015 Crossfire Invitational Coverage:
Results, Race Videos, Photo Galleries & Interviews To Be Posted After The Meet!