BERKELEY SPRINGS - Berkeley Springs used its home course to its advantage as the Indian boys and girls teams braved through the mud to win the Berkeley Springs Invitational cross country meet on Saturday.
In the girls meet, Berkeley Springs won with 23 points, followed by Martinsburg with 35. Mercersburg Academy, Pa., and Southern Fulton, Pa., rounded out the finishers with 81 and 85 points, respectively. Hedgesville and Cameron did not score because of incomplete teams.
Fallon Stone of Hedgesville won the girls race with a time of 21 minutes, 47 seconds. Berkeley Springs' Danielle Haynes finished second with a 22:28, while Cameron's Rina Reid finished third with a 22:30. Kayla Mundey finished fourth at 22:31, adding a second top-five finisher for the Tribe. Cameron's Sarah Smith and Hedgesville's Megan Breen finished fifth and sixth with times of 22:41 and 23:09, respectively. Zoey Jenkins paced Martinsburg with an eighth-place finishing time of 23:33.
Berkeley Springs' boys took a one-two-three punch all the way to the top, finishing the meet with 28 points. Martinsburg finished second with 60 points. Hedgesville finished third with 74 points, while Southern Fulton, Cameron and Mercersburg rounded out the list with totals of 97, 99, and 164 points, respectively.
Casey Doxzen (18:28), Patrick Peck (18:46) and Corey Shetler (18:53) finished first, second and third, respectively, in the boys race, clustering together to pace Berkeley Springs.
"I was talking with my teammates that we needed to stay up front," Shetler said. "On a day like this, where it's muddy, cold and poor weather, we weren't looking to run a good race. We were just looking to finish. Our goal was to do well on the first mile and keep a sustainable lead from everyone else and hold our place to the finish."
Vladimir Bauer paced Martinsburg in fourth place with a time of 18:56, while Southern Fulton's Josh Voight (18:57) and Hedgesvile's Matt Taylor (19:06) finished fifth and sixth, respectively, to pace their teams.
The mud proved to be the biggest challenge for all runners competing, but Berkeley Springs used that to its advantage.
"This course was at the wettest I have ever seen it," Berkeley springs coach John Rowland said. "We challenged our kids to own our home course. The weather was condusive to having that advantage. Running on our home course helped us know the wet spots better than our opposition. I was proud of our team's toughness."
"We are used to the mud and rain," Doxzen said. "We run on this course all the time, and it's always been muddy. That helped us in this meet."
"Footing definitely played a part," Shetler added. "We had to run a smart race in order to win."
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