NEWVILLE — The Mid Penn Conference held its cross country championships at Big Spring on Saturday morning and plenty of Franklin County runners had a good day.
Chambersburg's girls were second in the Class 3A team standings and put two girls in the top nine. The Trojan boys also placed second, and had two runners in the top 10.
Brook Boone
In the Class 2A races, James Buchanan was third in girls and fourth in boys and placed a runner in the top 4 in each race.
State College won both 3A team titles, scoring 48 points in the girls event, with Chambersburg in second with 112. The Little Lions had 31 to win the boys, with the Trojans totaling 87 points.
"This was definitely our best race of the season and it looks like we might be peaking at the right time," Chambersburg girls coach Chris Monheim said.
Ana Bondy of Carlisle won the race in 18:39.3. The Trojans' Mady Koons was 4th in 19:49.9 and Brook Boone took 9th in 20:03.3. The rest of the Chambersburg scorers were Dana Rosenberry (26th, 20:51.3), Natalie Quinn (30th, 21:02.3) and Kaylie Savage (43rd, 21:39.6).
Monheim said, "Koons and Boone were outstanding and gave us a great 1-2 punch. Rosenberry and Quinn had their best races of the season to earn all-conference honors (top 35). And Savage moved up a considerable amount during the race to give us a strong fifth spot."
Also in 3A, Waynesboro's top runner was Morgan Price in 41st (21:37.8), Shippensburg's first finisher was River Burrows in 71st (22:59.2) and for Greencastle-Antrim, Monica Schemel was 98th (23:36.4) and Sophia Denlinger took 99th (25:42.3).
Aiden Alleman
For James Buchanan in 2A, Katelyn Clever took third place in 20:58.8 and Lilly Garbinski was 20th in 23:31.1. The Rockets (73 points) finished behind Boiling Springs (29) and Bishop McDevitt (44).
In the boys 3A race, State College's Isaac Oppermann won the race in 15:34.8. Chambersburg's two top finishers were Liam Kirkpatrick in 7th (16:15.6) and Aiden Alleman in 10th (16:28.0). The other scorers were Julian Clark (13th, 16:30.9), Kaden Rife (29th, 17:09.9) and Boston Vincenti (30th, 17:12.9).
"We accomplished everything we wanted coming into the meet — we beat everybody else but State College, who is No. 2 in the state and ranked in the northeast region, and we got all five of our guys a medal for all-conference," Chambersburg boys coach John Ambrosio said.
"Liam did his thing up front, and our No. 2 and 3 guys had an exceptional meet. Rife was a little off today, but still got all-conference, and Vincenti is coming on to be a strong No. 5. We probably had our best day of the season today, and if we run like that in two weeks (at the District 3 meet), we could qualify for states."
Greencastle's duo of Joel Amstutz and Noah Parks, placed 17th and 21st, respectively, with times of 16:45.4 and 16:50.7. The Blue Devils placed 10th in the team race with 281 points.
Ship's Andreas Dunkel took 33rd in 17:15.2 and Waynesboro's Devin Barger took 49th in 17:35.6.
In 2A, Tristen Hall of James Buchanan finished fourth in 17:26.4, followed by teammates Nate Towns (9th, 18:21.4), Isaac Diehl (11th, 18:25.7) and Max Embree (14th, 18:53.8). Big Spring won the team title with 55 points, while the Rockets had 70.
