[Baltimore Sun] Towson boys, girls win Baltimore County cross country championships
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The Baltimore County cross country championship meet turned into the Towson Invitational as the Generals’ boys and girls swept the team titles and Towson’s Theo Brown was the fastest runner on the course. Hereford’s Sylvia Snyder prevented a clean sweep as she won the girls individual crown for the third year in a row.
The Towson boys, two-time defending state champions, finished with 31 points, ahead of runner-up Catonsville (61). Dulaney (63), Franklin (131) and Hereford (162) followed in the race held at the Baltimore County Agricultural Center.
After running shoulder to shoulder with Dulaney’s Oliver Katz, Brown pulled away down the stretch and finished in 16 minutes, 47.21 seconds. Katz was second (17:02.35), followed by Towson’s John Fields (17:10.96) and Catonsville’s Conrad Mlynek (17:1.23).
“That was the plan, pretty much stay on [Katz’s] shoulder. He’s a great runner, so try to use him as well as I could and then try to take it home in the last 800 or so,” Brown said. “I was gassed, too, as soon as we were coming up this hill here, his breathing was starting to pick up, mine was too.”
Brown wasn’t thinking about time, just beating the main threats from Dulaney and Catonsville.
“I figured all that I have to do is do what I can to get the team to win and for that race it just meant winning,” Brown said. ‘When I was coming up this last 800 I was thinking, ‘I’m doing it for all my boys and they are doing it for me.’ So if they are struggling up this hill, what right do I have to give up.”
His mates were more then also-rans. Behind Fields was Evan Kline (fifth, 17:25.89), Andrew Robinson (seventh, 17:35.46) and Henry Navyac (15th,18:09.95).
From top to bottom, the boys executed the plan perfectly for coach Gil Stange.
“That was the plan. We were going for place here,” Stange said. “I told him before the race, times mean nothing; it’s all about place. So if you bring yourself out trying to run a PR and you get beat by the guys that you are supposed to beat, then you are in trouble. Everybody understood the assignment: ‘I’m going to run to beat my man.’”
“They [Towson] have a lot to be proud of. They work really hard and they deserved to win today,” Catonsville coach Sandra Gallagher-Mohler said.
Her Comets gutted out the runner-up performance behind the top five of Mlynek, Sebastian Wautel (eighth,17:43.3), Aidan Foster (12th, 17:52.22), James Fitzsimmons (18th, 18:15.83) and Justin Bretiere (19th, 18:24.42).
“We knew today was going to be an absolute battle and I’m very proud of how they handled it,” Gallagher-Mohler said.
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Mlynek, who has run indoor and outdoor track, is in his first season of cross country after switching from soccer.
“I knew it was going to be challenging staying with Theo and Oliver because they’ve been hot all season. So, I kind of wanted to stay behind them and see how they were feeling this race and it ended up [Fields] just came right next to me. We just ended up pushing one another to keep going faster until he just out-kicked me in the end.”
The Towson girls won the 5,000-meter race with 28 points. They were followed by Hereford (41), Dulaney (73), Woodlawn (106) and Carver A&T (149).
“It was all in family,” said Stange, who had two sets of sisters in the Generals’ top five.
Senior Alex Lohse was second in the race in a time of 20:29.08. Senior Cecelia Van Lierop was third (20:39.88) and her younger sister, Catherine, was 13th (21:56.83), behind senior Caroline Richard (sixth, 21:13.68) and sophomore Lilyann Richard (seventh, 21:15.25).
Hereford’s Snider clocked in at 20:04.82 and was nearly 25 seconds ahead of Lohse. Catonsville’s Olivia Virago (fourth, 20:56.22) and Hereford’s Ridley Lentz (fifth, 21:05.88) also placed in the top five.
Snider ran in the Barnhart Invitational early in the season on the same course and placed third in 19:28.45, but this time, she and her coach weren’t concerned about time.
“This was a race. It wasn’t about time,” Hereford coach Adam Hittner said. “It was about crossing the finish line ahead of everybody else. She’s running in a competitive race in Virginia tomorrow.”
That didn’t deter Snider from learning from her Barnhart experience.
“I took a different approach. Up the hill I started off a little bit slower and I got more confidence, and then I would speed up on the downhills,” she said.
After finishing second in the state championship meet at Hereford the past two years, her goal is to climb to the top rung.
“She wants to win that individual title at the state meet without a doubt,” Hittner said. “That has been a huge, huge target for us this season. So we are trying to check off all the boxes for her in her senior year. She’s done so much for this program and this team, we want to make sure that she walks out of this with everything she’s wanted as well.”
Have a news tip? Contact Craig Clary at cclary@baltsun.com and x.com/ClaryCraig.
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