Article by Isaiah Shiau
On October 21st, Montgomery County hosted its county championship at Gaithersburg High School with 25 schools competing.
Boys:
In the boy's varsity race, Richard Mongomery's Noah Fisher won the Montgomery County champion title after running a first-place time of 16:06. Following behind Fisher was Caleb Dastrup in second (16:16) from Poolesville Sr and Sean Cunnigg (16:25) from Walt Whitman. Poolesville continued to place their next three scoring runners in the top 20 spots. This included Aaron Longbrake (16:38) in 9th, William D. Beane (17:00) in 14th, and Connor J Kohne (17:06) in 16th. Winston Churchill's boys were close behind in scoring as their boys held a low average time spread of 34-seconds. Led by senior Colin La (16:53), Winston Churchill placed second with a score of 97 points. However, the Poolesville Sr boys took the team county title with a winning score of 84 points.
The JV Boys 9-10 race was another win for the Poolesville Sr boys, but this time the race was much more close. Jonathan M. Dastrup placed first in a time of 18:16 while Montgomery Blair's Boris Golotyuk finished only two seconds behind in 18:18. Wheaton's Varun Srinivasan (18:29) and Armando Cerron (18:39) went 3-4 followed by Stephen Johnson (18:40) from Walt Whitman. Poolesville and Walt Whitman placed their top four scoring runners in the top 20 spots. Poolesville managed to barely beat out Walt Whitman by just 1 point for the team win. Poolesville's top five runners went 1-6-12-16-30 to score 65 while Walt Whitman went 5-10-14-15-22 to score 66 points.
In the JV Boys 11-12 race, Levi Forestner of Bethesda-Chevy Chase won in 18:22 with a 34-second gap between him and the next finisher, Evan Carter (18:56) from Winston Churchill. William Boehm (18:57) and Samuel Forcey (19:02) from Poolesville Sr went 3-4 with Bethesda-Chevy Chase senior Alexander Hicks (19:03) and Kevin Peng (19:04) from Winston Churchill finishing seconds behind the pair. Winston Churchill placed three more of their runners in the top 20 bringing their scoring to 2-6-9-10-17 with a winning team score of 32, beating Poolesville Sr by 5 points.
Girls:
In the girl's varsity race, Varri Higgins representing Bethesda-Chevy Chase won the individual county title with a first-place time of 18:39. A small group of girls finished closely together with Katie Greenwald (18:48) from Walt Whitman, Poolesville's Daisy Dastrup (18:50), and Grace M. Finnegan (18:51) from Richard Montgomery. Entering the varsity race, Thomas S Wooton High School had a deep roster with their top five scoring girls running an average time spread of 1:18, considerably lower than most other teams. Led by freshman Charlotte Chang (19:17), the Wooton Patriots won the team title with a score of 53 points, 48 points ahead of Walt Whitman.
The JV 9-10 race was won by Bethesda-Chevy Chase's Amelia Menefee in 22:40. The next podium spots were taken by Cayla Schwartz (22:49) from Thomas Wooton and in third, Samantha Park (22:57) from Winston Churchill. Bethesda placed two more girls in the top 10 with Olivia Carty (23:09) in fourth and Lilah Rich (23:48) in seventh. Meanwhile, Thomas S Wooton's first four scoring runners were looking strong, but the gap between their average spread was slightly greater than Bethesda, resulting in a team score of 46. The Bethesda-Chevy Chase JV girls managed to take home the team win, beating Wooton by 6 points with a winning score of 40.
In the final JV 11-12 girls race, out of the 65 runners entered, only five full teams were entered. This resulted in team scoring being spread out. Lily G. Kerchner representing Richard Montgomery individually came in first with a winning time of 23:01. With a sizeable gap between Kerchner and the next runner, Sydney Zimmerman from Bethesda-Chevy Chase finished second in 23:28. The first team runner, Anika Srinivasan from Thomas S Wooton, came in third with a time of 23:35. Wooton placed two more runners in the top 10 before a large pack of runners from Winston Churchill finished in 10-11-12-13-14. With another girl, Ava Schraeder (23:39) up in fourth, the Winston Churchill girls won with a team score of 28 points, wrapping up the Montgomery County Championships.