The girls race started promptly at 9AM under a cloudless sky and cool morning. Lauren Capone of Towson took off from the opening gun and ran without competition the entire race. She finished the race in 18:16 and looked relaxed around every turn. Sara Cimino of Dulaney broke away from the pack at the mile mark and finished a minute back of Capone and also had a minute gap on the rest of the field. Third place was a back and forth affair between Sarah Zader of Bel Air, Jessica Clark of Mt. de Sales, freshman Kelly Rush of Dulaney and Amy Morlock of Perry Hall. Clark held on to a fast closing pack with Morlock making up the most ground throughout the race and closed quickly in the last 800 yards. Rush shows a lot of promise and once she learns the intricacies of running against top competition will be a force at the seasoning ending championship races.
The team score wasn't even close. Dulaney blasted Bel Air and Mt. de Sales. Hereford was the next Baltimore County team and was a distant fourth.
The boys race began with Dwight Parker of Woodlawn, Brett Kelly of Bel Air and Arsalan Ansari of Parkville sprinting out to a 30 meter lead after 800 meters, but by the top of the first hill Ansari had dropped back behind the chase pack and Kelly and Parker were running by themselves. The chase group of Walsh and Bond of Dulaney and Jaeger and Sierakowski of Perry Hall were taking turns leading and slowly working their way to the leaders. In the second mile, Parker and Kelly had slowed considerably, with Kelly showing signs of struggling. Parker took a look back and decided he had enough and just took off. He put a lot of distance on everyone in that last mile and won the race in a meet record 16:26. The chase pack had moved in on Kelly and Jaeger had made a big move and began to put some distance between himself and third place. But then his new pair of spikes which had been slowly disintegrating during the race came apart and had ripped two bloody holes in the back of his heels causing him to back off the pace. Walsh and Bond were working together to catch Jaeger and Kelly and with a good closing kick Walsh went by Kelly in the final stretch.
The team score belonged to Dulaney with Bel Air a relatively close second. Hereford held off a surprising Towson team for third.
Baltimore County Rankings after Week Two
This was based on county meets and gave more weight to this weekends races. Pikesville ran at Gettysburg, Catonsville at Spiked Shoe and Eastern Tech at MidAtlantic. I looked at the times ran by those athletes and took an educated comparative guess. It's an opinion and you know what they say about opinions
Boys
1. Parker
2. Walsh
3. Bond
4. Jaeger
5. Sierakowski
6. Thaler
7. Friedman
8. Chang
9. Spencer
10. Duffy
Teams
1. Dulaney
2. Pikesville
3. Hereford
4. Towson
5. Perry Hall
Girls
1. Capone
2. Donadio
3. Cimino
4. Morlock
5. Rush
6. Whelan
7. Blair
8. Askins
9. Shoemaker
10. Hearn
Teams 1. Dulaney
2. Hereford
3. Loch Raven
4. Perry Hall
5. Catonsville