10/16 WKND: Conferences and Leagues begin the championship season (coverage complete)

Philadelphia Catholic League Division Championships

Midwestern Athletic Conference

AA PA#2 Quaker Valley boys placed four in the top seven, six in the top 30, and used a 1-5 spread of 38 seconds to become the champions of the Midwestern Athletic Conference with 30 points. Runner up team honors went to West Allegheny with 57 points and they were led by the league champion Brandon Krszal with his winning time of 17:14.

The AA PA#3 Quaker Valley girls completed the conference championship sweep with five in the top 8, seven in the top 35, and a 1-5 spread of 37 seconds to win the title with 27 points. Moon Area was the runner up team with 48 points. Angelica Peck of Blackhawk became the league champion with her comfortable winning performanmce of 19:50 and was the only girl under 20 minutes on the day.

Mid-Penn Conference Champs

Big Spring HS, Newville

Girls Race Summary

By CORY MULL
PennTrackXC.com

Leigha Anderson says she knew it was coming. That she’d be out there by herself, like most meets.

Hey, what’s new? In this case, it was yet another Mid-Penn Championship for the Cumberland Valley senior, her third in the last three years.

Expect as much from Anderson this postseason. She might be stronger than she was at this point last year. Her winning time of 19:38 was only three seconds off her career best at the Big Spring High course as a sophomore.

“I didn’t think I would be alone that whole time, but it kind of split up like that the past two years, so I knew what I was going to get myself into,” said Anderson, who was sixth as a freshman. “I like running on my own sometimes too. So it’s not too bad.

And she still had some left in the tank in the final 200 meters.

“I think if I was racing I could have had a little extra push, but it’s all kind of part of our game plan,” Anderson said.

Lower Dauphin freshman DeeDee Shea, owner of the ninth best time in the state (18:26), was held out by head coach John Butler due to a foot injury. She had injured it in her team’s last dual meet, Butler said.

Considering the Falcons have state qualifying hopes as a team, Butler said, he wanted to be on the safe side.

Without Shea’s influence, Anderson had little competition. The secondary pack was helmed by Lillie Brown of Boiling Springs, who finished in second in 19:58. Greencastle-Antrim freshman Nikki Garns pushed hard for a third-place medal (20:00) and Chambersburg’s McKenzie Doyle was fourth in 20:01.

Lower Dauphin junior Jenna Flickinger was fifth in 20:17.

Anderson looked to form early, pushing away from the starting mass as she made her way up the first incline, a steady, yet deceiving trap for anyone who went out too fast.

Once Anderson hit the wooded portion of the race, she thought, it was her time to create space.

And that’s what she felt she did. Heeding advice from her coach, she internalized her thoughts and became mentally stronger.

“I think it’s hard to catch people in the woods just because no one is watching,“ she said. “And no one is really cheering in the woods. So you’re all alone and it’s mental. So I think you have to keep pushing yourself. Our coach told us that we’re going to be racing against ourselves more than anyone.”

Yet, for all of Anderson’s merit, it didn’t lead to as much team success. The Mid-Penn Championships didn’t calculate team standings, though the final results did indicate which teams fared the best.

Chambersburg was among the brightest performers, scoring three runners in the top 10 and its entire five in the top 20. Had the meet been scored, Chambersburg would have beaten Cumberland Valley, 52-79.

The Trojans were led by Doyle in fourth, but crucial in the end result were seventh-place Courtney Group and ninth-place Natalie Holder.

Deija McBeth was 14th overall and Alexandra Orr was 18th. All five finished under 21-minutes. And outside of Doyle, the rest were freshman.

“Our one-to-five gap is as small as it’s been all season, which I’ve been preaching to them all year,” Chambersburg head coach Chris Monheim said. “If we get to districts and states, we’re going to live and die on our small time gap.

“We don’t necessary have a kid that’s going to go out and win districts. But we have five that are going to be within 40 to 50 seconds of each other.”

As the lone senior in the top five, Doyle feels a responsibility to lead from the front. She knows the value her teammates can bring in the most critical of races.

“It meant a lot to us because we’ve been working really hard to get here,” Doyle of the finishes. “Now it makes us more confident. We have a lot of ninth graders and they don’t even know our full potential.”

Boys Race Summary

By CORY MULL
PennTrackXC.com

If experience had taught Ed Schrom anything, it was that patience was his best virtue at the Mid-Penn Championships. He’d have to endure, to outlast, and to eventually outgun.

The Central Dauphin senior, the highest returning finisher from last year’s race (fifth), did just that, following his game plan precisely before fleeing from the lead pack and earning his first conference cross country title. He was flying through the rolling Big Spring High hills with less than a mile to go and finished in 16 minutes, 24 seconds.

Palmyra’s Connor Strynkowski, who took the race out from the gun, secured second-place in 16:36. Cumberland Valley’s Andy Flynn was third (16:41), Chambersburg’s Dan Patti was fourth (16:46) and Central Dauphin East’s Kyle Klaboe rounded out the top five in 16:50.

“This is my sixth time on this course,” said Schrom, who also was the Mid-Penn’s 1,600-meter champ and a member of the Rams 4 x 800-meter title team over the spring. “So I know it pretty well. The game plan was to sit behind the pack for two and a half miles.”

But after a mid-race surge revved up the pace at the halfway point,  Schrom was worried that the standard would falter, eventually falling back to its original speed. Experience kicked in at that point. It told him that once you get going, you shouldn’t stop.

“So I just kept the pace we were at,” Schrom said. “And pretty much between a mile and a half and two miles I put the space between everyone.”

Leading into the race, Schrom had never been one to thumb through online statistics and newspaper clippings. He had always operated under his own disposition, charting his successes through work ethic and coaching influence.

But on Saturday morning his parents showed him the newspaper, which revealed he was the favorite.

“After I saw that I said, ‘Oh man,’ and started biting my finger nails,” he said. “But the beauty of cross country is that there are 100 kids on the starting line and no one waits to take it out. Everyone just runs their own race and just goes. There’s not that much extra pressure on you.”

Fortunately for Schrom, Strynkowski played right into his strategy. The Palmyra junior swallowed the lead from the start, taking charge even though he was second-guessing it himself. It wasn’t Strynkowski’s intention, he said, but he felt the pace began too slowly.

“Actually, I started out hoping to be top 10 and not in first,“ Strynkowski said. “But the pace at the start was really slow so I felt I needed to do something to make it go a bit faster.”

Strynkowski wasn’t any pushover, considering he’d finished ninth in last year’s event, but even he admitted he wasn’t entirely comfortable leading from the start.

“It gave me confidence, but the thing is, I’ve been making a top five list for awhile,” he said. “And there were a bunch of guys I didn’t even account for that were in the top 10. And it kind of freaked me out.”

He eventually fell a couple spots from the lead pack midway through the race before gaining back a measure of control in the back end portion -- Big Spring is known most for its nonstop elevation. As quick as a downhill might feel, another slight incline might follow. He finished almost a minute faster than his 17:30 in 2009.

While the Mid-Penn didn’t calculate team scores, the team aspect still was an important end game. The District 3 meet was less than two weeks away and many teams used the conference championships to gain some understanding.

When it came down to the final results, Hershey (103) and Cumberland Valley (109) were involved in the tightest battle. The Trojans placed only one runner in the top 10 -- Cory Dowling in ninth at 17:02 -- but they finished out their top five in a spread of 45 seconds, by far the quickest pack of Saturday’s boys' action.

Cumberland Valley, always a potent late season threat, had two runners finish in the top 11 and was 82 seconds apart from its first and fifth finishers.