Cross Country Girls Take Third at State Meet

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Written by Joshua Sass

At about the 14-minute mark of the state cross country meet, a large group of runners can be seen nearing the finish line with the same color jersey. As they come closer, the letters “BCS” become clear.
In an amazing show of teamwork, Brentwood Christian’s varsity girls’ cross country team’s top five runners finished within 16 seconds of each other. This helped the girls finish in third place in TAPPS 3A at the state meet in Waco on Nov. 20, tying their best-ever finish in 2006.

The guys finished 13th out of 31 teams in the state competition, led by sophomore Evan Herring, who finished in 19:46. The best-ever finish for the boys was also third place, which they did in 2006 and 2007.
The girls’ top five runners all got in the top 21 out of 89 on the two-mile race. These runners and their times were junior Marisol Lawson (14:12), senior Priscilla Glenn (14:15), senior Morgan Vandygriff (14:19), freshman Hailey Miller (14:23), and sophomore
Haley Hutson (14:28). “I am so proud of these girls,” coach Katie Smith said. “We truly outperformed expectations and have continued the high standard set for this team and this program.”

Herring finished 25th out of the 119 runners for the boys; the next BCS finisher was freshman Joshua Sass, who finished 59th. The remaining finishers were senior Travis Clark, freshman Nick Pittner, senior Matthew
Onabajo, and freshman Garrett Shake. Clark, who has been the Bears’ top runner at most meets this season, fell and injured his leg early in the race. His time was 22:32, which is three minutes slower than what he had expected to run. Coach Rotich said the guys did really well, considering Clark’s misfortunes and Pittner’s hip injury.

“The guys did really well at the state meet,” Rotich said. “I hoped that they could get top six, but with Travis’s injury the team couldn’t do as well with one of their best runners gone and Nick still recovering from his injury.” The cross country teams went to Waco on Friday night, where the race was at the Baylor cross country training course. The course was considered to be extremely windy by the runners, who said the wind was angled perfectly down the hills so that they were terribly hard to run up against the wind.
The BCS girls beat the only other team from Austin in the top 10 teams in state – the San Juan Diego team, who finished 10th. The guys’ team also beat San Juan Diego, which finished 16th.

In the Georgetown meet on Oct. 13, Glenn and Vandygriff got 10th and 11th place, respectively, with times of 14:02 and 14:03. Herring
was the top runner for the varsity boys with a time of 19:37. The race was longer than usual and also very windy.

Rotich said both cross country teams performed well at the Old Settler’s Park meet on Oct. 6 in Round Rock. Clark was the top runner for the boys with a time of 19:51, followed by Herring. Glenn led the girls with a time of 13:15; she was followed by Lawson. The meet had both public and private schools, and the course was moderately flat.