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Boardman’s Chris Butler raced to an 11th place finish, outpacing more than 500 varsity competitors, to lead Boardman High School to a 12th place finish out of 46 Division I schools from Ohio and Pennsylvania at the 31st Boardman Spartan Invitational on Sept. 17 on the campus of Boardman High School.
The Spartan varsity is now 63-17 on the season.
Boardman had the program’s best finish at the home invitational since back-to-back second place finishes in 2012 and 2013. The Spartans had the best score from area teams and was third best of the teams from the OHSAA Northeast District that ran.
“Very pleased with our team’s performance,” said Boardman Head Coach John Phillips. “This was the largest and most talented Spartan Invitational in history and I challenged our seniors to get our team to make a statement about our program today and they certainly did.”
Scoring for the Spartans were Butler, senior Nick Digiacomo in 31st place, junior Mark Moradian in 110th, senior Nathaniel Ams in 153rd and junior Luke Hetzel in 157th. The varsity race had 526 runners and the junior varsity had nearly 1000.
That week’s BW-3 ‘Runner of the Week’ was junior Tony Saab, who was able to earn a new personal best time despite tough competition and course conditions.