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McDonald’s strategy pays off with girls title
By ERIC MAUK
HEBRON
Over the last two years, the McDonald girls cross country team had done its best Kardiac Kids impersonation, complete with the heart-wrenching setbacks that the Brian Sipe-led Cleveland Browns suffered as the original Kids in the early 1980s.
Last year, Michael Richards and his team sat out the Division III Ohio High School Athletic Association state cross country championships after failing to qualify for the team title by one solitary point. This year, the team headed to the state meet after winning the regional championship by the same single-point margin — but even that wouldn’t be enough to settle things on a bone-chilling Saturday.
The scorecard showed a tie score after McDonald’s top five finishers were paired with the quintet from Sugarcreek Garaway, sending the event into cross country’s version of overtime — the sixth runner. McDonald freshman Ally Jamison posted a time of 20:39.19 to easily outdistance Garaway’s sixth runner, giving McDonald the first girls state cross country team championship in school history. McDonald won its first girls state track title in June.
“A lot of these girls have seen the boys team come home with the hardware from the state championships and have never gotten to do it themselves,” Richards said. “With this team this year, they’ve been a team of faith. They believe in each other, they do the right things and they use their faith to push through the tough times.”
Tough times were in abundance as 35-degree temperatures were accompanied by 25-mph winds that lashed runners at every turn. Richards, in his 11th year with the Blue Devils, told his charges that they would be better off using NASCAR tactics to get through the early parts of the race.
“About three minutes before the start we told the girls that the smartest runners will tuck in behind someone when the wind is in your face, and let them break through that air for you,” Richards said. “Then when the wind is at your back, you can open it up.”
The strategy paid dividends, especially for Heidi Hoffman and Malina Mitchell, who finished 10th and 11th overall. Neither runner was in the top 30 at the one-mile mark and the freshman Mitchell was sitting in 18th to lead the team at the two-mile mark, but both runners made up fistfuls of positions in the final 300-yard sprint.
“We told the team they should let anyone that went out fast go ahead, because in this wind, they would burn themselves out and come back to the pack,” Richards said. “Both Heidi and Malina have been leaders for us all year and they really stepped up at the end of the race, each passing eight or nine runners down the stretch.”
Hoffman capped her junior year with a time of 19:25.13 while Mitchell came home in 19:25.20. Junior Brenna Rupe (19:57.14 — 39th), junior Rachel Perry (20:09.98 — 52nd) and senior Bobbi Oakes (20:17.49 — 63rd) set the stage for the tiebreaking effort of Jamison, while junior Yasmeen Elnobani (21:11.66 — 91st) rounded out the team’s results. Each of the team’s runners posted their best times of the year, despite grueling weather conditions.
A pair of sophomores established themselves as potential threats for 2015 as Western Reserve’s Ashleigh Rowley finished 18th with a time of 19:31.31, while South Range’s Xena Maali placed 40th at 19:57.88. In the Division II race, Poland freshman Maggie Sebest ended up 35th, with a time of 19:36.21.