Boys Results - Girls Results
The Mustang Invitational at C. Milton Wright High School on Friday afternoon officially kicked off the 2016 cross country season in the state of Maryland with some impressive results. In particular from Bel Air junior Kieran McDermott, who not only repeated as meet champion, but improved upon his winning time by an incredible 24 seconds with his 9:46 two mile performance on an all-grass cross country course.
He had some quality competition in the race with him to push in early in Loyola-Blakefield's Max Barbour as both runners were ranked earlier today among the top 20 in the state of Maryland in our preseason rankings. Barbour, who ran 9:42 for 3200 meters on the track, finished 14 seconds behind in second place at 10 minutes flat.
A total of 17 runners dipped under 11 minutes in the boys with Loyola-Blakefield having four of those runners and nearly fifth including Barbour, Camden Gilmore (5th, 10:19), Paul McDonald (6th, 10:30), Aganze Nkere (12th, 10:49), and Kenny Wiggins (19th, 11:02) to round out their team scoring at 44 points to win the team title. Calvert Hall College finished second with 66 points, while Bel Air closely followed in third place with 70 points despite having two of top three finishers in juniors McDermott and Ethan Gray (3rd, 10:11).
The story in the girls race was the introduction of a talented newcomer for the C. Milton Wright program in freshmen Haley Cummins running away with the victory individually in a time of 12:08. She finished 13 seconds ahead of her teammate and top returnee from last year's meet in Jessica Rogers, who knocked 17 seconds off her 2015 performance in a runner-up effort of 12:21.
The C. Milton Wright girls repeated as champions in their home invitational to open their season tallying a low team score of 25 points averaging 12:40 for their top 5 finishers, which is well ahead of their benchmark set last fall in the same race at a 13:18 average. Only one upperclassmen in the junior Rogers makes up their top 5 as well as two more freshmen Lindsay Perry (8th, 13:01) and Jordyn Powers (9th, 13:13) were runners #3 and #4 for C. Milton Wright finishing among the top 10.