Dahmen, Rockets dominate state cross country meet

Staff report

HEBRON

Want to know how dominant the Maplewood boys were in Saturday’s Division III state cross country meet?

Consider this: The Rockets’ top runner, junior Tristan Dahmen, won the individual title. And if he hadn’t run on Saturday, Maplewood still would have won by 20 points.

On a cold, blustery day, the state’s top-ranked team had six runners finish in the top 50 and the Rockets cruised to their first state title since 2005 with a 67-113 edge over Summit Country Day at National Trail Raceway.

“Words can’t really describe it,” said Dahmen, who finished second at last year’s meet behind McDonald’s Bobby Johnson. “Our great tradition lives on. From the first guys all through our seventh runner, everyone just really showed up today and did what they had to do.”

McDonald, which won last year’s team championship, finished third and Trumbull County had the top three individual placers in Dahmen (15:57.53), Mineral Ridge senior Logan Smith (15:58.15) and Maplewood junior Allen Sparks (16:06.12). Dahmen had to fight Smith over the last 300-yard sprint to the finish.

McDonald won the girls title by tiebreaker with Sugar Creek Garaway.

“Our running culture is a big reason why our teams do so well,” Maplewood coach Dave Deeter said. “The runners in our area push each other all year long, and so when they get to state competition, they’re not shell-shocked by having other people around.

“I think in a lot of other places in Ohio, they win everything team-wise and individual-wise and they get to a meet like this and don’t expect to have bodies all around them. We always have bodies around us because we have such great runners. That helps a great deal.”

Senior Derek Morrison (16:43.98 — 30th), junior Nate Keeney (16:55.48 — 40th), senior Charlie Woodrum (17:00.59 — 46th) all finished ahead of the third-place runners of both Country Day and McDonald, while Rockets sophomore Jake Hall (17:01.14) took 47th, just in case a tie-breaker came into play.

Maplewood dedicated the meet to the school’s legendary coach, Oscar Grant, who died in early September.

“We talked about how we don’t mourn death, we celebrate life,” Deeter said. “We celebrated his life, but also all the hard work that we put in this year. We wanted to show the entire state what we were made of.”

Danny Loomis led the McDonald contingent, as the junior placed 17th with a time of 16:28.94.