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Lakeview boys, Girard girls capture D-II crowns
By Joe Scalzo
CORTLAND
Lakeview senior Christopher Edie was warming up in the bullpen before Saturday’s 3200-meter run when one of his teammates came up to him and said, “Edie, you need to win this one. We’re winning by one point.”
Technically, the Bulldogs were leading Streetsboro by 1.5 points in the race for the Division II district title, but “I thought they were just messing with me,” Edie said.
It was the second-to-last event. Bulldogs coach Mark Swinning knew the Rockets had a faster 4x400 relay (the final event), so if they were going to clinch the crown, “we knew we needed our 3200-meter guys to do their thing,” he said.
Edie, who had already run a personal-best in the 1600 about an hour earlier and who “hates” the two-mile, decided to run with Champion sophomore Allen Sparks, then try to out-kick everyone on the final lap. If his teammate, senior Aaron Lamer, could score a few points, too, so much the better.
With two laps left, Edie was in a lead pack of four, while Lamer was eighth. That’s when former Lakeview standout Aaron Harris, who was helping officiate, turned to Swinning and said, “Lamer’s gonna come up to fifth.”
“You think so?” Swinning said.
“Yeah,” Harris said. “That Pymatuning Valley kid [Chet Mientkiewicz] isn’t doing too well. Lamer looks good.”
Lamer “only” got up to sixth — he finished in a personal-best 10:40.09 — and Edie ran away from everyone on his last lap, finishing in a personal-best 10:07.84 to help the Bulldogs pile up a title-clinching 13 points. They eventually edged Streetsboro 114.5 to 104.
“I saw one kid kicking on the last lap and I said, ‘I’m not letting someone beat me,’” Edie said. “It’s kind of awesome to know I just finalized something like that [a district title].”
Hubbard junior Matt Jones set a district record in the discus (51 feet, 9 inches), while Girard’s Collin Harden (110 hurdles), Sparks (1600) and United’s Riley Fillman (300 hurdles) also won individual titles. United’s 4x100 relay and Hubbard’s 4x400 relay also placed first.
The girls team competition wasn’t nearly as dramatic, with Girard scoring in 16 of 17 events — the Indians were shut out in the shot put — to best second-place Ursuline 124-90.
“Our school has never gotten it [a district title] so to finally say we have it is really nice,” senior Alexis Cloud said. “We train so hard for everything, we’ve got a good group of kids and we have people who put everything they have onto the track.
“I feel like it’s a good thing that we got it because I feel like we deserve it.”
Cloud set a district record in the 300-meter hurdles with a time of 45.75, besting the 45.85 run by LaBrae’s Megan Gunther two years ago. She also placed seventh in the 100 hurdles and ran on the second-place 4x200 and 4x400 relays.
“Beating Megan, I wouldn’t have imagined it, but when they announced it [the time] before the race, I was like, ‘I want to go out there and get it,’” she said. “I knew I was capable of it.”
Ursuline’s 4x100 and 4x200 relays both set district records, while Irish junior Alex Carnathan (100) and senior Lavonte Powell (200) won individual events. Also winning were Girard senior Justine Kagy (400), United’s Allison Parks (1600) and Liberty senior Courteney Lukac, who broke her own school record in the 800 with a time of 2:17.83 — less than a second off the district record (2:17.28).
The top four in each event will compete in next week’s regional meet at Austintown Fitch.
“This is one step, one phase, and they know that,” said Girard girls coach John Spano, whose team finished second to Akron St. Vincent-St. Mary at last year’s district meet. “This is a three-stage process, district, regionals and state, and they work each stage and go from there.”