WINTERTHUR – St. Andrew’s girls cross-country team, which approached the New Castle County championship meet hoping to finish second or third, shocked a shirt-sleeved crowd by winning the title at Winterthur on Saturday afternoon.
Lily Murphy, Leah Horgan and Lia Miller each climbed three places over the final mile to give the Middletown boarding school its first victory at the 30-year-old event, upending Padua, which had dominated Delaware earlier this fall.
Carlita Kaliher, Katie Payne and Katrina Endres of Tatnall finished 1-2-3, the fourth time Tatnall has swept the top three spots since the meet moved to Winterthur in 2005. But with no other runners in the top 100, the Hornets finished only sixth.
Jonathan Drew of Middletown continued his unbeaten season, overtaking Ethan Walther of Delaware Military Academy at midrace to win the boys championship by 13 seconds in 16:09.4.
With five runners bunched in the top 20, led by third-place Matt Miller, Salesianum repeated its boys team title.
St. Andrew’s top five girls are from five different states. Like their peers, they train together over the summer, but virtually.
“We hold each other accountable,” said Murphy, the senior leader who lives in Philadelphia.
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Murphy (fifth), Horgan (sixth) and Miller of New York (eighth), each second-team All-State last year, were backed by Claire Hulsey of Maryland (15th) and Caroline Meers, a Virginia native who improved 70 seconds from 60th last year to a 21st-place finish that clinched the Saints’ 12-point margin.
“The dynamic of us three is nice for pushing each other. It’s L-cubed,” said Horgan, referring to the first letters of the three leaders’ names.
Horgan was raised in the prolific grade school program at St. Mary Magdalen in Brandywine Hundred. The daughter of Marianne Marini, who was the state’s top distance runner in 1988, she is the 13th All-State descendant of her grandfather, Dante Marini, a record-setting two-miler at the University of Delaware in 1956 who died on May 18.
“This really wasn’t on our radar whatsoever. We were going to be happy with third or second place,” said Murphy, who led the trio’s acceleration on the second half of the 5,000-meter course. “At about 1.5 miles, I start packing it down. For me, the last 800 meters is a sprint.”
Padua was led by Molly Flanagan, who finished fourth – the same finish as her mother, Michelle Lucey, when she led the Pandas to the championship in the first New Castle County meet in 1983 – and by Anna Bockius (ninth), the meet’s top freshman.
The other Pandas, who lapped every other school in the state in the Joe O’Neill Invitational three weeks earlier, were slowed by colds, the 70-degree weather and the course’s tricky turf.
Tatnall’s top three overcame challenges to their breathing to finish within 14 seconds of each other.
“Almost our whole team got bronchitis two or three weeks ago,” said Endres, who finished third. “I can still feel it in my lungs a bit.”
Winner Kaliher (19:12.07) felt it the worst.
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“I was on the bike for a day. I was sick,” she said. “I didn’t know how I was going to perform this week. It was worse today. But I really wanted to run today.”
Second-place finisher Payne added, “I really wanted to start out strong. If I felt worse at the end at least I knew I’d be with a pack of girls who pushed me and kept me going.”
Isabelle Walsh of Middletown (seventh) and Natalie Donaldson, the remaining cornerstone of St. Mark’s 2021 titlists (10th), completed the top 10.
Sophia Holgado (11th), Kylie McCarthy (20th), Kelsey Wolff (23rd) and Jane Mazzeo (24th) joined Flanagan and Bockius to give Padua second place, ahead of Archmere, led by Taylor Costa (19th) and Maddie Priest (25th).
Olivia Needham (16th) paced fourth-place Charter of Wilmington. Alyssa Napier (12th), Jordan Blanck (17th) and Mallory Holloway (18th) led Conrad to fifth place.
Clare Kornacki of Ursuline (13th) and freshmen Angelina Mangado of Brandywine (14th) and Natalie Radecki of Caravel (22nd) completed the all-county team.
Drew first achieved statewide prominence with his breakout third-place finish in last year’s county meet. He focused so thoroughly over the summer that he covered a 5,000-meter August fun run at flat Lums Pond in under 16:30.
In preparing for Saturday’s meet, he ran Winterthur a second time, in reverse.
“I wanted to get more hill work,” said Drew, who took control on a downhill slope in the second mile, a difficult gambit. “It’s hard on the back when you try to hold yourself back when you go downhill. You’ve got to let yourself go.”
Drew, Jonas Rush (fourth) and Walter Samuels (fifth) led Middletown’s boys to second place, the Cavaliers’ best finish ever.
Walther, the state’s top sophomore, finished second.
“I went out a little too hard, but I was able to hold on against Matt Miller,” said Walther. “At the end, I wasn’t letting anyone get past me. I worked too hard.”
Walther, Troy Hedrick (14th) and Ethan Barnett (15th) led DMA to third place.
Miller led five other Sals – Colin Small (seventh), James Kennedy (eighth), Matthew Bradley (ninth) and Sam Felice (18th) – to all-county status.
“We told them that Middletown and Cape are right on us, so everyone has to put in their work,” Miller said.
Lathan Love-Brown (sixth) was A.I. du Pont’s first top-ten finisher since 2005.
Luke Kain (11th) and Gavin Leffler (12th) paced fourth-place Tatnall.
Eighth-grader Timothy Claessens led fifth-place Newark Charter.
Camilo Alvarez (24th) and Richie Angiullo (25th) helped lift Archmere to sixth place.
Camerin Williams of Hodgson (10th), Connor Stockton of Saint Mark’s (13th), Braeden Peterson (16th) and Sebastian Bergstrasser (17th) of Conrad, Peter Bird of St. Andrew’s (19th), Christian Guckenberger of Newark (20th), Concord’s Miles Smith (22nd) and Brandon Williams of Wilmington Charter (23rd) also made all-county.
