The course was run on freshly mowed fields thanks to the great caring of meet director Donnie Mickey of CM Wright. The day was also beautiful with a bright sun making it seem warmer than it actually was. .
The girls A race began exactly on time at 3:30PM and the field of 152 runners headed out on the opening 1500 meters on the lower soccer fields in front of a huge crowd of spectators. Michelle Donadio of Franklin and Alison Smith of Atholton went out to a big early lead as expected with Lauren Capone of Towson, trying to make a comeback after a disappointing DNF at Bull Run, and a pack of CM Wright runners chasing them down. .
Donadio was the first to be swallowed up by the pack as Barnes made her way to the front of the pack. As the leaders moved to the back of the park Barnes kept increasing her margin on Smith and held a 30 meter lead coming back onto the main soccer fields. .
Entering the field, Capone made a move to catch Smith and caught her with a half mile to go. Going up the final incline around the bathrooms, Capone surged and pulled into second with Kelli Buck of CM Wright making a big move from 20 meters back. Smith surged and pulled away for second and Buck hammered the last 100 to catch Capone at the line. Barnes won in 18:17 with Smith following 20 seconds later.. .
The CM Wright girls made a very impressive showing in the race with a 27 point total and having all of their runners in by 25th place Urbana was second, nine points better than Broadneck. .
The boys race started out with Brett Kelly of Bel Air and Andrew Revelle of Atholton pulling out to a big early lead with a large pack following. Going into the back fields there was a lead pack of eight runners that passed the mile in about 4:51 and not far back was another pack of 30-50 runners all between 4:57 and 5:02. More on this later. .
Centrowitz made a huge move on the field through the muddy section and put 60 meters on the field before coming out for the final 1200 meters. He passed two miles in 10:21. Centrowitz slowly increased his lead over the last portion of the race to win in a very impressive 15:34.9 for the sophomore. Teammate Matt Llano, who is in his first year of cross country, passed a fading Revelle for second in the last 50 meters. After the first 10-15 finishers, there were just blankets of people coming across the finish line in packs. .
Broadneck won the team title with 75 points over Liberty just 11 points back and Walt Whitman a close third over Centennial and Urbana. Loyola and Bel Air were back in the pack. .
The story of the day was the crowded courses conditions. The meet was well managed and all races went off at the scheduled time. Parking problems were minimal and there were few lines at the bathrooms or at the concessions. The course though is fast and flat, especially the first 1500 meters and despite an opening 2:21 first half mile, there was very little daylight between runners. In fact, as was mentioned before, there was a large pack of 30-50 runners all making a sharp right hand turn into the back portion of the park. There was little room for people to maneuver leading to numerous shoving matches and finger pointing. .
Zach Friedman of Pikesville said,"It is was dirty out there. People were pushing, falling, getting stepped on and cutting the course all over the place." There were numerous reports of cones being moved and large packs of runners cutting tangents around corners. Even in spots where passing could be accomplished, there were so many runners trying to pass at the same time that many people were coming back with large spike gashes in their legs. Teams that worked together as packs finished further back than expected in the team standings because they couldn't move up through the wall to wall runners. .
Even with more than enough volunteers in the finishing chute and the race staff using multiple chutes, it was difficult to keep runners in the proper order at the finish line due to the packs of runners finishing together. .
But then again this is cross country and that is what the sport is all about – contact. As one coach said, "We should have done more speed work last week to help us get out faster." .
But in the end, CM Wright should make claim to move back up into the top 10 in the South East region and Broadneck will make a claim to move into the #1 ranking for the boys in the state.