Big cross country meet today at Greenfield

Greenfield Recreation Park in Botetourt County will be the site of the Blue Ridge Invitational cross country meet today. There will be over 20 schools competing in middle school and high school races for both girls and boys, including host teams Lord Botetourt and James River.

The first race of the day will be the girls middle school race at 4:30 p.m. followed by the middle school boys at 5 p.m. The high school girls will take the course at 5:30 p.m. and the high school boys will wrap things up at 6:15 p.m.

LB and River both competed in the Alleghany Invitational at the Jackson River Sports Complex last Saturday. The Parry McCluer boys and Christiansburg girls won team titles in the meet.

Botetourt’s boys finished sixth among 31 schools while James River was 25^th. Eric Duncan and Ethan Thorne of LB finished second and third individually behind Kebryl Chandler of Parry McCluer, who ran the 5,000-meter race in 15:11. Duncan finished in 15:27 and Thorne came in a second later at 15:28.

“Alleghany is always a very fast course, but due to its timing in the season all of our athletes train through this meet to focus on performances later in the fall,” said LB coach Noel Preece. “Despite heavy legs from one of the hardest training weeks of the season, every single athlete who raced today ran a lifetime best, barring two men, both of whom were using the meet as a workout with no intention of posting representative times. Every athlete from LBHS performed exceptionally well.”

Also scoring for the LB men were Preston Vaughn in 36^th place, Archer Lee in 91^st and John Moughrabi in 108^th. There 239 boys who finished the race.

For James River, Braden Jones was the top finisher with a 53^rd place effort. Also scoring were Mark Voight at 105, Nolan Linthicum at 166, Charles Stull at 171 and Barrett Pace at 174.

“Our top four boys broke 20 minutes and our fifth was at a 20:01,” said River coach Daphne Davidson. “We had five new personal records set and overall it was individually a very strong race. I think we also have moved up our ranking in the district competition. Our goals are to get our boys closer in times and work on moving as far as we can as a team.”

In the girls race LB had just two runners. Jules Banka was 87^th and Maddie Moore was 147^th, both with personal best times.

The River girls finished 18^th among 23 teams with freshman Maddie Davidson leading the way in 24^th place among 191 girls. Also scoring for River were Maren Pauley in 77^th, Holly Weddle in 123^rd, Daniella Murray in 110^th and Alexandra Bona in 149^th place.

“Our girls team did amazingly well,” said coach Davidson. “Six out of our seven girls got new personal records. Our goals are to continue to set new records and see what we can accomplish in this first year for most of our girls.”