The Garfield G-Men cross country program may have only qualified three individual runners to the Ohio High School Athletic Association Division III state meet last Saturday at Fortress Obetz, but each one left a mark, as sophomore Lina Kaufman, junior Owen Thomas and freshman Lucas Thomas earned first team All-Ohio honors
“I don’t know if words can describe it,” said Coach Justin Thomas. “I am just proud. Proud as a coach, proud as a dad for my boys and I have been around Lina for years, so it is just a great moment. It makes me proud especially when I see them smiling and know that they are working as hard as they can.”
Kaufman, who returned to the OHSAA Division III state meet after landing 20th place in her freshman season, secured 11th place with a personal best 18:33.30.
“I am so happy,” Kaufman said. “Last year was my first year, obviously because I was a freshman, so everything was so scary and I was by myself so that made it ten times scarier and this year I was so happy, I felt more ready and felt more confident.”
Last Saturday, Kaufman started from the back as she checked in at the first mile sitting in at 18th place.
Kaufman acknowledged that a lot of runners wanted to start quickly at the beginning of the race, but going out at full speed was not her style.
“I knew it would start fast and that is not my race strategy; some people started out fast, I was in 37th place at the starting point,” she noted. “Thankfully I did keep moving up.”
Her patient strategy prevailed, as she posted a time of 6:00.85 in the second mile, advancing to 16th place and kept picking off runners in the final mile, as she chased down five more runners logging a time of 6:42.01 in her final leg.
Coach Thomas said that after running her best race of the season at the OHSAA Division III regional meet on Oct. 31, Kaufman trumped that performance with a career-best race of her still young high school career.
“She executed better this week than she did last week,” he added. “Just impressive to watch, she popped at the right time, she was confident and didn’t let it get away from her, I just watched as she moved up throughout the whole race.”
According to Kaufman, although she was once again the only Garfield female runner representing her team, she was fueled by having the company of the Thomas brothers alongside her at her second OHSAA Division III state meet.
With two consecutive seasons finishing as a first team all-Ohioan under her belt, Kaufman said that her next goal is to ensure the entire G-Men girls’ team makes it to the state meet for her junior season.
“We have some incoming freshmen,” she noted. “This year, we did not have any freshmen so we will have incoming freshmen next year and I think that we can do it.”
On the boys’ side, Owen came in 13th place with a time of 15:34.90 while Lucas secured 17th place at 15:45.30.
“It means a lot,” said Owen, who returned to the state meet after previously advancing as a freshman while running at Notre Dame-Cathedral Latin and clinched 53rd place. “It was not the greatest race, I was hoping for a little more, but you can never ask for too much, being an All-Ohioan is great.”
According to Owen, he saw that the top flight of runners separated themselves from the pack early, so he tried to stay with that pack and moved into 11th place at the first mile mark with a time 4:45.47.
Owen fell to 12th place at the second mile checkpoint, at 9:47.48, which was the fastest pace he had run this season. Owen stayed in the second flight of runners, finishing in 13th place, marking a triumphant return to the OHSAA cross country scene after not running varsity his sophomore year.
Owen said that although he had not been involved with high school cross country last season, he felt more focused than ever. He said that he enjoyed his return to high school cross country even more because he competed for Garfield.
“I think it has been a perfect fit,” Owen said. “Everybody on the team has been great, and I feel like it is more like a family than anything, missing out on making it as a team stunk for everybody but I think we will be back for next year.”
Lucas said that the fast-paced start to the race pushed him to attempt to keep up with the first flight of runners but acknowledged that it was a pace he was not accustomed to.
“I tried to get out with them, and I wanted to go with that pack but I started to realize that I kept looking up and I just couldn’t hold on so I had to fall back and stay with the next pack,” he said.
Lucas moved from 19th place to 15th place at the first mile checkpoint with a pace of 4:50.71 but drifted into 16h place after running 5:05.16 in the second mile and completed the race in 17th place.
With the final chapter of the 2026 OHSAA cross country season now closed, Coach Thomas said that he is more confident than ever about the Garfield G-Men’s cross country program’s resurgence with Owen, Lucas and Kaufman returning for another season.
