Peter Sorensen put the rest of the 3A state field on notice with a dominant victory at the Baltimore County Championships. (Photo by John Roemer)
Who was the top boys runner of the seventh week of the 2019 cross country season? Vote below!
Towson junior Peter Sorensen left no doubt in anyone's minds as to who was the top runner at this year's Baltimore County Championships. In going under 16 minutes for the first time in his career he put 27 seconds between himself and the runner-up, Dulaney's Zak Audia. Sorensen's 15:54 performance is tied with Damascus' Tamrat Snyder for the second-fastest 5K among 3A runners this fall, behind Bel Air's Caleb Zylka.
One of the few runners to beat the aforementioned Snyder on Saturday at the Montgomery County Championships was Springbrook's Surafel Mengist. He nearly pulled an upset by erasing Garrett Suhr's early lead, and though he wound up finishing third after losing out to Suhr and Ayalew Fantaw in the final 100 meters, his 15:37 personal best is still the seventh-fastest in the state coming out of the weekend.
Earlier in the weekend, Oakdale's Kyle Lund defended his CMC title at Boonsboro High School. The 15:25 was a three-mile season best, one that ranks fourth in the entire state this year. An added bonus for Lund? He led the Bears to a comfortable team victory just one year after the Oakdale boys lost the CMC title to Linganore on a sixth-runner tiebreaker.
Beck Wittstadt did not win the boys race at the inaugural Skip Grant Invitational at the Agricultural Farm Park in Derwood, but his third-place effort did help the Gilman boys secure a team victory. The Greyhounds found themselves in a tight battle with two different St. Albans teams (the local one from DC, and the one from across the pond in Hertfordshire). Gilman's 1:14 1-5 split (led by Wittstadt, the team's top finisher), was the tightest among the three teams and helped them beat both St. Albans; the three teams were separated by just three points.
Finally, Logan Trautwein and the Allegany boys took care of business at the Allegany County Championships on Tuesday. Trautwein (17:13) led four Campers in at 18:11 or faster as they went 1-4 and scored 18 total points. Could the Campers be working their way up to a possible podium finish at the 1A state meet behind Trautwein?
