Sunday, September 26, 2004
All season, Trevor Dickey has been waiting for his turn to make an impact for the Western boys cross country team.
That time came Saturday as the finish of the first-year runner earned the Panthers the Howard County Cross Country Meet championship for the third straight time.
With the results tied at 32 for Western and Eastern, the tiebreaker is the finish of the No. 6 runners from each school. Dickey came across the line 15th overall while Comets' No. 6 runner was 25th. Meet host Northwestern was third at 60 and Taylor was incomplete.
Western swept the varsity titles as the girls finished with a score of 19 to the 42 of Tigers. Eastern and Taylor had incomplete teams.
The close finish in the boys' portion came as no surprise to Neer or Comet coach Brandon Mink. "Eastern was good last year, but they've moved up several notches this season. They're working hard and training well," Neer noted. "We calculated the scores and both of us were in the low 30s. Sure enough it played out that way. We were fortunate to have Trevor Dickey there to step in. That was a huge part in helping us retain this championship. Mink knew about the midway point of the race that Western would retain the title.
"We knew it would be really close with Western, that it would be nip and tuck," Mink said. "I couldn't ask for more than what they did. About halfway through, Western had three guys in front of our 3-4-5. I knew at that point it was slipping away, but we gave everything we had."
Michael Marley led off for the Panthers with fourth place and then came the group of Luke Minor, Eric Walsh and Trevor Mann, who took sixth through eighth places in a six-second span.
"Luke, Trevor [Mann] and Eric knew they had to get personal bests and they did it by running together," Neer said. "They passed two Eastern runners with a mile to go."
Moshe Rison was the Panthers' fifth runner, finishing 12th and Dickey sealed the title.
Tony Martin continued his mastery of area races in his first season as a harrier. The comet senior won the meet with his time of 16 minutes, 26 seconds.
"I love watching him run," Neer said. "He just seems to glide along."
Johnathan Fansler gave Eastern two runners among the top five and the pack of Drew Parton, Trevor Young and Kedric Athan finished 9-10-11.
Christopher Sinnett, the Titans' lone representative, finished second to Martin and Northwestern's Matt Ullmer was third.
Titan junior Danielle Glick broke away from Western's Anna Hurlock and Annina Gruber to win the girls individual title in a Northwestern course record time of 15:20. That was three seconds better than the 2000 time of former Panther Christan Bahler.
"I passed them around the 1 1/2 mile mark. I wanted to go at a faster pace and took over the race," she said.
What makes her race more remarkable, however, is that she's been bothered by shin splints for the last week and she was running on blistered feet.
"My goal was to win and get my PR. I won, but I was two seconds off my PR," she said. "It was really rough. It surprised me I was feeling good. I thought I'd be a little slow because of the problems with my legs."
Hurlock finished second while Gruber took third. Megan Clearwaters and Cassie Myer added finishes of fifth and sixth before Becky Elliott wrapped up the scoring in ninth.
"We've had a very, very good week of workouts. I've added some things we haven't done before," Neer said. "It was a good week to prepare for what's to come still."
Lauren Sewell was the top runner for the hosts as she finished fourth and Jennifer Claudio gave Northwestern a second runner among the top 10 by finishing seventh. Emily Rethlake was the top finisher for Eastern as she came in eighth.