Photos by Jon Fleming
Lord Botetourt seniors Eric Duncan and Ethan Thorne finished first and third in one of the area’s largest cross country races of the season last Saturday. Cave Spring hosted over 100 schools in the annual Knights Crossing at Green Hill Park in west Roanoke County.
Duncan won the Boys Red race, the most competitive of the day, with a time of 15:15.5. Blacksburg’s Rivers Matthews was second in 15:19.1 and Thorne finished third in 15:22.
“Eric and Ethan raced to the highest placements in program history at the highly competitive invitational,” said LB coach Noel Preece. “Knights Crossing is one of the largest and most competitive meets in the nation with well over 1,000 athletes of each gender competing at the high school level.”
Duncan took an early lead, stretching the pack in the first mile before Thorne took over pacing, pulling a small group of four runners clear around the midpoint of the race. This group quickly thinned to three, including both Thorne and Duncan and Matthews of Blacksburg. Duncan kicked home for what was arguably the most impressive win of his career so far as Thorne fought hard to finish only seconds behind in third, matching his previous best time despite significantly warmer conditions and having spent the summer building back from a major springtime injury.
Also scoring for LB were Preston Vaughn in 121st place, Archer Lee at 200 and John Moughrabi at 283. The Cavaliers finished 18th as a team as Myers Park won the team title.
On the women’s side, freshman Jules Banka led the team and set her second consecutive PR in her second-ever high school race, finishing in 173rd place. Maddie Moore was 274th and Ember Wiley was 20th.
James River ran in the Black race, for smaller schools. The boys finished 19th and the girls were 16th as North Cross swept both team titles.
Braden Jones led the River boys with a 23rd place finish in 17:41 while Mark Voight was 64th, Nolan Linthicum was 115th, Charles Stull was 119th and Barrett Pace was 163rd.
For the girls, Maddie Davidson was 17th overall in 21:54. Also scoring were Maren Pauley in 72nd, Holly Weddle in 98th, Daniella Murray in 123rd and Alexandra Bona in 134th.
The Knights are scheduled to run at Hidden Valley High this Saturday while the Cavaliers are off this weekend.
