You can't teach guts. After a hard week of training, with lots of hard miles in their legs, the boys XC team traveled to the McDonough Invite in Cleveland Heights to face off against 23 other teams in the region. Today the motto was: just race. With a ski-hill mid-race intimidating runners and slowing times, our boys practiced racing today regardless of time--and race they did. When all was said and done, the boys walked away in third place of the 23 scoring teams, a huge achievement that marks the growth and future of the program. Last year, the boys finished 13th at the same meet.

James Johnston '27 led the green pack once more, running one of the fastest closing miles of the top 30 in the race to move up throughout the last mile. He finished in just over 18. Brendan Bennett '28 continues to cement his status in our Varsity 5, running a solid 18:57. Nico Iteka '25, Hunter Haupricht '25, and  Ian Fleming '27 mixed it up throughout the race, driving the end of our scoring pack to a solid finish as they pushed each other all the way to the line. They all finished near the top 50 (Ian was 51st) in a race of 200. Rian Arora '26 ran a big course PR, looking strong the entire race, to finish just over 20 minutes. Braydden Crum-Humburg '28 finished right behind Rian, toughing it out after a spill on the hill to solidify our Varsity 7. Daniel Randazzo '27 and Victor Wang '26 both ran solid races today, securing their place in the top 9 and adding to the team's depth.

Some of the real fun happened today with number of runners debuting in the Reserve green for the first time. In the Open Race, Keven Gong '25 and Ethan Jing '25 led with experience as they finished 1-2 for the team. But it was freshman Ronan Flower's speedy 6:50 opening that led the squad through mile 1. BinBin Tang '28 put together another solid run for the green, breaking 24 on the challenging course. Arav Mathur '28 and Tyler Omega '28 also broke 24 on the course. Wen Xiao '27 finished just under 25 to round out the top seven for the JV race. Ronit Arora '28 debuted with a strong opening, and finished just behind Wen. Congrats to Tristan Kahrl '26 (New PR), Justin Yin '28, Henry Shelton '28, and Alex Wang '28 who ran their first 5ks for the team today.

Full results: https://oh.milesplit.com/meets/619485-mcdonough-xc-invitational-2024/results


Next up: The team travels to Sandy Valley to go for top 3 once more.