Albemarle Girls win the Region 5D title!

On a sunny spring day at the Patriot's home course of Panorama farms the Albemarle Girls ran a great race to secure the individual and team title for the state's 5D region. The girls were dominant in their run today and will advance to states with the top seven runners competing with the hopes of placing high amongst the best teams in Virginia.

Spiking up is serious business for the girls of Albemarle. (Pictured: Madeline Kronebusch (R) and Olivia Amand (L)

Arianna DeBoer continued to lead the way for the girls and won in a solo effort of 18:49. Cassidy Guyton

The first wave do strides

had a breakout race (again!!) to run a PR of 19:27 and place second. Cassidy has worked extremely hard through a lot of adversity over her high school career and this huge time drop at the end of her senior year is proof of her efforts. Cassidy worked with sophomore Jenna Coleman for most of the race to earn Jenna a third place finish with a time of 19:48. Maddie Gypson held strong for the race and managed to stay ahead of another team's runner to place 4th. Maddie also found the most four leaf cloves (5) during the pre-race hunt and was kind enough to ensure that all of the girls on the starting line were carrying one. Madeline Kronebusch ran a smart race to place 6th with 21:03 and Olivia St. Amand

Olivia St. Amand streaks to the finish

rounded out the first racing group with a 7th place finish. Olivia had one of the best finishes of the day with a huge kick to overtake a Harrisonburg runner by just a tenth of a second. The team (top five score) managed an impressive 16 points and a huge gap over Patrick Henry High School's 64.

In the second wave, Bella Sonen led the field in 21:40 to round out the top seven runners on the team. Lillian Peskova went out hard to

Bella Sonen leads Lillian Pesokva and Savannah Meriwether

finish strong in 21:51 which was very close to a PR and Savannah Meriwether continued to astonish with her fitness gains over the short season and ran 22:17. Freshman Eva Weaver completed the 1-4 sweep of the second section in a season's best of 22:53 with a great final kick. All of the girls in the second race didn't have the the opportunity to race many competitors in their wave due to COVID restrictions (and the depth of our team!!) which made racing quick times difficult but everyone stayed flexible and showed a lot of grit with their runs. They also placed well in the overall time merge in 11th, 13th, 16th, and 23rd in the region.

Hanna Guyton (not pictured) interviews the second wave runners

Shoutout to Hana Guyton for once again helping with the live video stream, Izzy Hecmanczuk for making the trip out to support, and the incredible photographer, Halle Barredo who got many unseen grimacing (and a few smiling) moments for the photo album.

Also congratulations a small group of the JV squad who raced a good final race at Lousia this past weekend! Alexis Alms placed second overall with 23:11 and was followed closely by Savannah Meriwether in 23:29 and Eva Weaver in 23:40. Anya Rothman ran her final race with a lot of grit after struggling with an injury all season to round out our group of runners who made the trip.