Varsity highlights
The 2005 Pioneer Cross Country team opened up the season by running
away with both the individual and team championships at the Brother
Rice Invitational held at Kensington Metro Park. Pioneer
outdistanced second place De La Salle by a whopping 50 points and put
on a show for the big Pioneer crowd at Kensington.
Senior Captain Peter Christmas celebrated his birthday in fine
fashion by completely dominating the field and finishing in first
with a time of 16:27. Peter ran away with the individual title and
was never really challenged as he became the first Pioneer in recent
history to bring home an individual championship at this very
competitive invitational.
Senior Captain Craig Marlatt ran a very impressive race finishing in
seventh place with a time of 17:11 on a very difficult course. Craig
is running as well as he ever has at Pioneer, and undoubtedly had one
of the best races of the day. Senior Captain Eric Anderson had a
solid race with a 16th place finish and a time of 17:32 and is off to
a good start for 2005.
One of the biggest stories of the day was the return of Senior Paul
Corbett. After dealing with a stress fracture for all of the 2004
campaign, Paul made a huge statement today that he is fully recovered
and as strong as ever finishing in 22nd place with a time of 17:52.
Senior Leo Callendar rounded out the top five with a time of 18:05
and a 37th place finish. Running in their first Varsity races
Sophomore Taylor De Luca finished in 18:25 in 61st place, and Mark
Antonuk in 83rd place with a time of 18:49.
Congratulations guys on your very impressive victory at the Brother
Rice Invitational!
Junior varsity highlights
Like the varsity team, the JV team dominated the field. Who would
have expected such fine performances as the dust flew high across
this tough course and the temperature soared well into the 80s?
Although the JV race is not officially scored at this meet, at least
three of our guys placed in the top ten. Junior Mac McDonald-Wilkins
(18:09) and Freshman Dan Culbertson (18:11) led the way with 2nd and
3rd place finishes. What an outstanding finish for a freshman in his
first high school race and a great race for Mac! Juniors Mike
Weisbuch (18:53) and Paul Versluis (18:57) are no strangers to track,
but were running their first cross country meet, both turning in
tremendous races. Mike finished a strong 8th place and Paul finished
4 seconds later. Seniors David Del Zoppo (19:31) and Lars
Zwaanenburg (19:37) and Sophomore Kinshuk Rajan (20:13) turned in
career PRs for their first race of the season. Great job!
We have a number of new runners to the team. Notable among them this
week were Sophomores David Cogswell (19:43) and Eric Hubbard (20:21).
David broke the 20 minute mark on his first time out and Eric knocked
an incredible 4:50 minutes off his 5K time trial the week before.
Senior Ashwin Rameshbapu, Junior Mark Hanss, and Sophomores Sean Beck
and Jacob Whiten all turned in fine performances for their first time
out. Excellent effort from all of them!
Returning team members Jamie Fogel, John Strader, Eric Levinsohn,
Andrew Copp, Yan Charniauski, David Hanss, and Paul Kimeldorf all
posted good times for their first outing of the year. Congrats!
Today's performances demonstrated we have a fine freshman class this
year. In addition to Dan Culbertson's great finish, Neil Keicher
(19:39) came in well under 20 minutes for his first race. David
Wallington broke 24 minutes and teammates Christopher Cain, Nate
Moseley, and Dan Kellman all broke 25 minutes. Brian Diehr was not
far behind. Welcome to the cross country team, freshman. We're glad
to have you with us!
A number of runners had to pull out of the race prior to finishing,
due to injury or other circumstances. Several of them were well on
their way to top 20 finishes. We look forward to the speedy recovery
of all the runners and hope to see them back in top form.