From start to finish, there wasn’t much doubt. The Western Albemarle boys put together four amazing times, three of them under 11 minute splits and that fourth at 11:01 in the Ragged Mountain Cup. With a team title and then anchor Joe Hawkes coming up with the individual title with his 10:11 run, it was a solid day for the Warriors.
“We knew we had a good team but weren’t really sure what the pace would be like,” Hawkes said. “Coach Bain told us that we just had to come out and get the job done and so really, we just came out and did what we had to.”
What made the boys race truly interesting was the difference behind Western between the first and fourth legs. The second, third and fourth place teams all belonged to Albemarle, yet those three Patriots teams trailed early. The first leg saw Western freshman Joesph Taylor set the tone with his second overall time of 10:18. Fork Union’s Julian Yecas’ third best individual time of 10:22 put the Blue Devils in second place ahead of third place Woodberry Forest who saw a strong start from Riley Flecther, running a fourth place time of 10:34. Just behind that was the fifth place time from Albemarle’s JD Macknight, who’s squad would eventually place second.
When Hawkes took off, he had two Albemarle squads and Woodberry chasing behind him. But the fastest runner of the day didn’t have to sweat it out too bad as his team won by 57 seconds.
“It was almost better having all those guys behind when I ran that fourth leg because chasing someone is great but having someone behind you can be just as good,” Hawkes said. “When you think some is on your heels you push hard. Have the lead it great when you’re running the final leg.”
Thanks to pushes from Mark Pellissier, Nicholas Gardella and Harris Naseh, the Patriots were able to catch Fork Union and Woodberry and hold them off.
And then there was St. Anne’s, which didn’t have a top-10 finisher but managed to take fifth place as a team as all four of its runners, Hewson Duffy, Victor Ji, Zach Ashby and Sebastian Cave all ran between 10:55 and 11:44. With Vi taking 14th and Ashby coming 21st, that was enough to edge Fork Union and Woodberry.
