Padua stretches streak, St. Andrew's wins first team title in DIAA girls cross country
FELTON - The season’s most dominant runner, Carlita Kaliher of Tatnall, was barely leading last fall’s most dominant, Bryn Crandell of Indian River, with 400 meters remaining in Saturday’s DIAA Division II girls cross country championship, gingerly aware of a hip flexor that had kept her from running for much of the last three weeks.
Then Kaliher fell. Her right quad gave way as she rounded a hairpin turn entering the final hill that determines state champions at Killens Pond State Park.
She crumbled to the side, falling into a chain-link fence, unable to continue.
Crandell, whose only loss in Delaware in the past two seasons was to Kaliher in the Joe O’Neill Invitational four weeks ago, repeated as state champion in 18:48, the day’s best time in the two-division meet.
Sophia Holgado commanded all 5,000 meters in the large-schools race, slicing 78 seconds off her time in last week’s New Castle County meet to become the 10th consecutive Division I champion from Padua in 19:10. She also led the Pandas to their 10th straight team title.
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The smallest school had the biggest fan base. St. Andrew’s, after its breakthrough county championship last week, drew two buses, three vans and dozens of parental carloads to see the Saints win the school’s first Division II title in cross country.
In a year dominated by underclasswomen – 10 of the day’s 14 best runners will return next year – the rematch between Crandell and Kaliher, the day’s first race, was the main event.
For two miles, they and Tatnall’s Katie Payne traded leads throughout the Killens Pond course, whose sandy, quick-draining soil makes it the ideal setting for a day after torrential rain.
Emerging from the woods, Crandell and Kaliher each refused to be gapped by the other, heading toward a titanic finish the state had not seen in a girls championship since Tatnall’s Haley Pierce and Charter’s Julie Macedo brought their national rankings to the 2011 county meet.
As in 2011, when Pierce and Macedo both fell in exhaustion on the uphill stretch, Tatnall saw its favorite collapse. Well hydrated and carefully paced, Kaliher was more vulnerable than any spectators realized.
“At the two-mile, I started to hurt a bit. I expected it. I knew wasn’t going to feel 100 percent in this race at all,” said Kaliher, who trained on the bicycle and in the pool throughout the month.
“At 800 to go, it’s like ‘You can make it through.’ I turned a curve and I could not. I fell and my body just gave out. I knew it could have happened. I definitely feel I could win.
“I didn’t think I was going to fall and not be able to finish, but in my mind it was a possibility. I’m disappointed, but I’ll move past this. I’ll try to fix a little whatever my problem is for next year.”
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Crandell, a competitive swimmer who turned to running during the pandemic, has faced her own adversity. While recovering from a track season injury, she finished fourth in the Joe O’Neill Invitational.
Her foot injury wasn’t from overwork, but from nature.
“I have very flat feet. I have orthotics in my spikes because my foot has no arch,” she said. “It was bound to happen, in overuse in training.”
The Indian River junior’s methodical strength and gifted sprint gave her a 10-second victory in last year’s rainy championship at Brandywine Creek, and she found a way to do it again.
“I never try to be out front,” Crandell said. “On any given day for anyone in the top 10, it could be anyone’s day.”
A force in the sport for nearly 20 years, St. Andrew’s finally reached the winner’s circle as its core of Lily Murphy (fourth), Leah Horgan (seventh) and Lia Miller (eighth) was backed by first-year runner Claire Hulsey (12th) to give the Saints a 47-83 margin over Archmere.
“We kept reminding ourselves that we’re not running for PR, we’re running for a state title,” Murphy said. “Our systematic approach is usually passing people together, but obviously you can’t control that all the time.
“We don’t run for ourselves. We run for each other.”
“We’re a mentally strong team,” Horgan said. “That means that we’re racing with people who are probably better athletes, but our mentality really drives us.”
Padua’s supportive culture soothed the sting of last week’s unexpected loss to St. Andrew’s on Winterthur’s tricky turf. The runners laughed with each other in a ride to a Sunday practice run at Killens.
“It gave me a reason to come back,” said Holgado, who finished second last year. “This week I was devastated, but I just wanted to bounce back.”
Molly Flanagan closed within two seconds of Holgado, followed by a covey of Pandas. Anna Bockius (fourth), Kylie McCarthy (sixth), Kelsey Wolff (eighth), Jane Mazzeo (10th) and Mary Drost (16th) gave Padua a 21-68 margin over Charter of Wilmington.
The Force placed seven runners in the top 21, six of them freshmen or sophomores led by Veronica Kamenitzer (11th), Olivia Needham (13th) and Cora Falgowski (15th).
Maddie Priest (ninth) organized summer practices among geographically dispersed teammates to propel Archmere to its best result since 2009.
Claire Kornacki (13th) led third-place Ursuline. Natalie Donaldson, holdover from the Saint Mark’s team that swept the state last year, finished fifth.
Diamond State Conference champion Alyssa Napier (sixth) and Mallory Holloway (15th) paced fourth-place Conrad.
Sussex Academy’s Lily Bowe (10th) and Katya Geyer (12th) and Natalie Radecki of Caravel (11th) also made the top 15.
In Division I, Blue Hen Conference champion Isabelle Walsh (fourth) and Mari Collick (18th) led third-place Middletown.
Katie Kuhlman (fifth) led fourth-place Cape Henlopen.
Arieina Varrato of Sussex Tech (seventh), Kent County champion Faith Mitchell of Milford (ninth) and Bree Talley of Caesar Rodney completed the top 15.
This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: DIAA cross country: Padua, St. Andrew's run to girls team titles
