By Phil Murphy
DigitalSports.com
On Saturday at Great Meadow, the Midlothian girls’ cross country team ran away with their third consecutive Virginia AAA state title — pun fully intended. The Lady Trojans became only the second team ever to three-peat in the girls Class AAA competition; the Lake Braddock Lady Bruins won four straight state titles from 1985-88.
This year, Midlothian Coach Stan Morgan’s squad had two runners place in the top six and five in the top 40 for a winning score of 57, finishing well ahead of Oakton (110), Western Branch (131) and Lake Braddock (139). All three years of the Lady Trojans’ reign have been won by a margin of no less than 41 points, finishing directly ahead of a Northern Region opponent in each championship.
Not even the heralded Lake Braddock team of the late 80s was that dominant.
This team’s future may even be brighter than its present, as three of the aforementioned top five Lady Trojans are sophomores or freshmen.
“We even have a few more freshmen coming in,” sophomore Kathleen Lautzenheiser said. “It’s exciting. We’ll have a strong team even though we have three seniors leaving. I think we should be able to do well next year and the year after that.”
Lautzenheiser took individual honors after finishing third a year ago as a freshman. Her winning time of 17 minutes, 56.41 seconds was just two seconds ahead of runner-up Chantilly junior Lia DiValentin, but over a full minute lower than her time from last year’s state title race.
“Over the last 100 meters, I could hear the crowds chanting ‘Lia!,’ so I knew she was within a second of me,” Lautzenheiser said. “I knew she was right there. I think the weather helped me, though. I love the cold. My legs weren’t getting tired like last year and I felt a lot stronger at the end. I just told myself I had to keep pushing.”
DiValentin forced the champion to the brink over the final stretch, but Midlothian’s star sophomore simply had the late energy necessary to take home the title.
“I still have not developed a really great kick like Kathleen and her teammates have,” DiValentin said. “Even though she’s younger than me, props to her. Obviously she’s an amazing runner and they come around once in a while.
“I’m just going to work on that kick. With my endurance I was fine. It was just that my legs blew up. I’m going to work on my legs and adding some muscle down there soI can stabilize at the end of the race.”
For the Northern Region, this is a vast improvement from a year ago, when only Lake Braddock senior Michelle Presley (7th place) finished in the top eleven.
Processing your request, Please wait....
