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The Davie cross team returned to Kernersville’s Ivey Redmon Park Oct. 16 for the CPC championship meet. Despite recording 15 new personal record times out of their 24 competitors, the War Eagles were relegated to fifth place finishers in both the boys and girls races.
For the boys, Reagan took home its second straight title with 54 points and narrowly edged runner-up Reynolds by four. Mt. Tabor grabbed third with 67 and was followed by West Forsyth (85) and Davie (90). The Reagan girls made it a sweep as they coasted to victory with 34 points to easily outdistance West Forsyth (52). Tabor (59), Reynolds (93) and Davie (134) rounded out the top five.
Individually, Reagan’s Tate Shore (15:37), Reynolds’ Cedar Nichols-Barnhart (15:42) and Davie’s Thomas Essic (15:55) took the top three spots in the boys’ race. For the girls, Tabor’s Rachel Riley took top honors with a time of 18:52.
Ethan Lakey was the second War Eagle across the line as he claimed ninth in 16:37. He was followed by Brayden Kistner in 26th (17:27), Jacob Steelman in 27th (17:29) and Logan Zuleger in 29th (17:42). Steelman’s effort was a new personal record time by five seconds, while Zuleger notched a two-second PR. Tyler Hill had a season best effort of 17:48 to claim 32nd. He was followed by Jackson Sulecki (17:53) in 33rd and Chris DeVicente (18:02) in 40th. Sulecki went under the 18:00 mark for the first time with a 27-second PR, while DeVicente’s mark was a 21-second PR.
Ty Greene (19:52), Avery Van Lente (20:29), Patrick Brady (20:51) and Tyler Deaver (21:01) all raced to new personal best times. Chad Hardin clocked in at 22:59 and was followed by Ronan Dailey (23:54) and Liam Smith (26:22). Dailey and Smith ran personal bests as a total of 10 War Eagles established new all-time best marks in the boys’ race.
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Lexi Marion led the Dave girls with a 12th place finish and a new PR by two seconds (20:47). Freshman teammate Rachel Starkey finished 30th with a time of 22:46. Rounding out the scoring were Kinsley Shinsky in 38th (24:22), Clara Phelps in 40th (24:33) and Isabella Schilling in 53rd (26:05). Shinsky’s time was a new personal best by 1:01.
Abby Lane was next across the line for Davie with a time of 30:16. Maggie Smith followed with a 1:56 PR in 31:21. Hayden Smith’s 32:41 was a 1:15 PR, while Alexa Villa crossed the line in 33:01, which was her best time by 56 seconds.
“We did some good things today,” said coach Rob Raisbeck, “but a fifth place finish for the boys is not where we expected to finish. We knew the girls were locked into fifth so that was not a surprise. Although we had a bunch of PR’s, the bottom line is that we need to be running faster at this time of year if we want to achieve our team goals. The four teams that beat us in the boys’ race all saw some significant jumps in performance. Our scorers have to run faster at regionals if we want to make it to states. I project six teams will come out of our region and we are the seventh or eighth best team out of the 28 schools in the Midwest. We have to be more aggressive. At the mile mark, Mt. Tabor had nine guys in front of our No. 3. If that happens at regionals, we will get buried.
“We did have some really nice performances out of Jackson and Chris, who had big PR’s. Patrick broke 21:00 for the first time and Tyler Deaver had a big jump. Our girls did as expected. Lexi had her third straight PR and Rachel is giving us all she has as a freshman. We just need more depth on the girl’s side.”
The team will return to Ivey Redmon this Saturday for the Midwest Regional in hopes of qualifying for the Nov. 3 state meet. The boys race at 9 a.m. and the girls follow at 9:40.
Notes: Davie had three runners selected all-conference. Essic and Lakey received all-conference recognition for the second straight year, while Marion received her first all-conference honor.