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South Range girls, Maplewood boys win Suburban League titles
By Joe Scalzo
CANFIELD
South Range High girls cross country coach Diane Krumpak had seen her runners’ talent. She’d seen the work ethic, the love for the sport, the potential. All of it.
She just hadn’t seem them put it all together on the same day.
Until Tuesday.
Raider senior Mollie Pierson placed fifth, teammate Xena Maali was seventh and Madelyn Kimpel was 10th to help South Range narrowly edge McDonald, 48-45, for its first Suburban League title at the Canfield Fairgrounds.
“They’re always worried about so many other things and today I just said, ‘Go out and race,’” Krumpak said. “And they raced.”
McDonald sophomore Malina Mitchell cruised to the overall title in 19:10.2, besting Poland’s Maggie Sebest by more than 30 seconds, and senior Heidi Hoffman was fourth, but the last year’s Division III state champions couldn’t overcome the absence of their No. 3 runner, Brenna Rupe, who missed the race with an illness.
The Raiders placed five runners in the top 20, with senior Emily Fromel placing 13th and sophomore Lillian Kimpel 19th out of 282 runners.
“They love running, they love the sport and not every kid does,” Krumpak said. “That’s where it starts. I can see them when they’re 40. They’re going to be out running.”
Mitchell won her fourth straight Suburban League title — in fact, she narrowly edged Sebest in 2012, when they were both seventh graders — after breaking away from the pack after the one-mile mark.
“I felt a little bit of pressure,” Mitchell said of having won the three previous titles, “but it worked out.
“On Saturday [at the Spartan Invitational] I wasn’t feeling like myself but from the beginning of this race I felt good. On Saturday I didn’t have the best race so I wanted to leave everything on the course today.”
Maplewood’s boys team took a more laid-back approach. The defending Division III state champions treated Tuesday’s race as more of a workout than a race, although it didn’t show in the standings.
Seniors Allen Sparks and Tristan Dahmen finished 1-2, crossing the line less than a second apart, as the Rockets placed five runners in the top seven for a 20-88 win over second-place McDonald.
“We just decided to go out for the first part of the race to see how we’d feel,” Maplewood coach Dave Deeter said. “I told them that there’s good competition around them, so if you feel good, work with that competition. If not, settle in somewhere.”
McDonald senior Danny Loomis was third, 18 seconds behind Dahmen, while Maplewood junior Jake Hall placed fourth, senior Nate Keeney was sixth and sophomore Ethan Sparks was seventh out of 338 runners.
“This race is special because you have the best teams from three counties — actually four counties now that Lakeside comes down — and it’s all divisions, so you don’t have to worry about DI, DII, DIII,” Deeter said. “Everybody gets to run together. And the other thing you see is guys pushing for each other from other teams, and that’s what I love to see.”
Maplewood returned five of its top seven runners from last year’s team, which won the sixth state title in school history. The Rockets are ranked first in the latest Ohio coaches poll with all 12 first-place votes and are coming off a 20-point win over the second-place team, St. Thomas Aquinas, in Saturday’s Spartan Invitational.
“We’ve all been working really hard — harder, I believe, than last year,” Sparks said. “We’ve got a good work ethic going and we’ve all been improving. We’ve just go to continue.”