2015 Crossfire Invitational - Girls Preview
Haley Wright was last year's Crossfire Invite champion, but Boonsboro is not returning to this year's race for her to have a chance to defend her title and race against Lang again. This is Lang's first time racing in this meet as she will actually come back just 3 days later to race again on Friday in her home invitational of the Scorpion Crawl, which she has won every year since her freshmen year including an 18:14 5K PR run last fall. She has already set several course and meet records this year. Could Lang take down two more this week?
It would appear that this race could be more of a time trial for Lang out in front of the field, but it is a deep girls race with 7 girls among the schools attending who have dipped under 20 minutes for 5K this season including Bryn Mawr School junior Amy Egan (18:57) and the Liberty sophomore duo of Heidi Rinehart (18:58) and Maeve Lyons (19:06) expecting to lead the chase pack after the 2012 Maryland 2A state cross country champion Lang.
Rinehart was the runner-up at the Blazers Invite three weeks ago and third at the Urbana Invite this past Saturday, while teammate Lyons was a top 5 finisher in the small schools race as the team's top finisher at Bull Run. Egan went sub 19 to start her season in a top 5 finish at the Seahawk Invite and was a runner-up in her next major race at the Spiked Shoe Invite.
After missing two of her team's races at Oatlands and Bull Run, Catoctin's Julien Webster was back in action at the Urbana Invite this past weekend and finished fourth in the race with a 5K performance of 19:54, which was the same time she ran in a runner-up finish to Hayley Jackson at Maryland Track & Trail before her two weekend hiatus from race. Her teammate Bella Kreiner led the team in the two races that Webster was missing and was 11th in the 2014 Crossfire Invite.
The Century duo of Kiley Hurst and Avery Arena are actually the top two returnees from last year's meet when they finished fourth and fifth with times of 20:41 (Hurst) and 20:52 (Arena) respectively on the Liberty High School 5K course.
The Liberty girls are the defending meet champions and the reigning 2A state champions will have their work cut out for them to repeat on their home course despite having a stellar front two in Rinehart and Lyons. The Century girls are the lone All-Maryland Top 25 ranked squad in the field after finishing 12th in the Bull Run merge, while the Walkersville girls (2nd) and Catoctin girls (5th) both finished ahead of Liberty (7th) this past Saturday only 3 days ago at the Urbana Invite.
2015 Crossfire Invitational Coverage:
Results, Race Videos, Photo Galleries & Interviews To Be Posted After The Meet!