Boy's Cross Country: Knights match with big schools; finish in 10th

By Ben Spector
Winning After MidKnight

                         

EDGEWATER- If you were to hear the results of the Middletown High School Knights Boy’s Cross Country team’s performance at the Seahawk Invitational at South River High School, nothing would indicate them as a fantastic performance.

10^th place out of 26 teams with the Knights’ top finisher coming in 28^th wouldn’t strike anyone as a amazing performance and certainly wouldn’t be something that the Knights would consider a “win”.

But, to understand how the Knights 10^th place does fulfill those requirements would only require a quick view of the results sheet from the meet to put it all in perspective.

That’s because Middletown was in the Boy’s Varsity A division of the meet, a division that was filled with upper-level private school such as Mount Saint Joseph’s, Gonzaga, and Archbishop Spalding.

On top of the tough private schools participating in the meet there was also a gauntlet of high-ranking pubic school competing for the title such as Walt Whitman, Broadneck, Westminster, River Hill, and South River. So, for Middletown the 10^th place was not a bad thing at all.

In fact, that 10^th place was one of the best ways that Middletown could start the season. They even finished as a team over one of those private schools in Archbishop Spalding.

From an individual standpoint, even though the Knights did not carry and runners into the top 25 places on the leaderboard for the Varsity A Division, they would have a solid showing as a team helping them to their 10^th place finish.

The top two individual finishers for the Knights were juniors Brennan Straits and Riley McDermott who finished back-to-back in 28^th and 29^th place with times of 16:49.40 and 16:50.60 respectively.

Straits and McDermott finishing as high as they did is a fantastic sign for the Knights as they’ll look to be the breadwinners at the top of the standings for Middletown this year at most of the meets and had an excellent start to their seasons with Straits picking up a PR.

The other finishers for the Knights included Kelvin Ngo in 58^th place, Duncan Taylor in 88^th place, and Matt Dillard in 107^th place rounding out the scoring finishers for the Knights. The non-scoring finishers for the Knights were Michael Harris and Nick Coyne in 142^nd and 143^rd place to finish off the Knights runners for the day.

Middletown will be back in action in a week when they head up Interstate 70 to South Hagerstown High School to compete in the Rebel Invitational on Saturday September 10^th at 9:00 a.m.

At that meet, Middletown will compete in a field that is full of public schools giving the Knights a better idea of how they stack up in the state.