Cardinal senior Sam Gdovichin’s first appearance at the Ohio High School Athletic Association Division IV cross country state championship may have been his one and only state berth but he left it all out on the course, surging late to finish in 67th place with a time of 16:56.43 last Saturday morning at Fortress Obetz.
“It is amazing,” said Gdovichin. “Ever since I was a freshman starting to do summer training all the way up until now, this has been a goal to be at this state meet and it means a lot to me to able to go out and do what I did.”
Gdovichin became the first male Cardinal runner to represent the Huskies at the OHSAA state meet in 21 years, with the last representatives being the well-regarded OHSAA Division II state runner-up squad, which coincidentally included Coach Jenn Fekete’s brother Michael Humphrey.
Gdovichin had been trying to break through to the state meet throughout his high school career but had always come up short.
“I was stumbled up a lot with injuries,” he noted. “The first year I did not make it to the regional meet because I was young and inexperienced, and I had trouble pacing myself sometimes. In my sophomore and junior years, I had gotten a lot better, but injuries were stumbling me.”
On Saturday, Gdovichin experienced a slow start to the race as he hit the first mile mark at 67th place.
For as flat as the course was at Fortress Obetz, it was also a narrow course, which did not leave Gdovichin a lot of room to maneuver. He acknowledged at some points throughout the race there were some sharp and narrow turns.
The Huskies’ senior sat in 81st place at the second mile mark but made his move in the final stretch, kicking at the right time and picking off 14 runners to advance to 67th place in the final cross country race of his high school career.
“Knowing it was my last race, it was one of those things where it was like ‘You are one mile away and you have two options, you can either be like I will try to get this kid or this kid or just give it 110%’ and that is what I tried to do. I left nothing in the tank, and I was really happy about that.”
Fekete said that the Cardinal coaching staff strategically placed people around the course calling to him at certain points where his placement was. She said that she was one of the last people who Gdovhichin in the final leg of the race, where he was in 89th place, and said that from then on Gdovichin kicked into a higher gear, advancing 22 spots to finish on a high note.
According to the seventh-year coach, Gdovichin’s final stretch of the championship race perfectly illustrated the course of his varsity cross country career.
“It defined who he was and showed when he put his mind to it and said that’ I am going to do it’, he ran all summer and built up his mileage,” she added. “He dedicated his summer to the state race.”
After breaking a 21-year drought of Cardinal not having a male runner represent it at the state cross country meet, Gdovichin said that he hopes his teammates can follow his lead and start a new tradition of Huskie runners frequently earning state berths.
“It feels great,” he said. “I hope that after myself there are other kids that can come up and do the same. Even just being on the board at my school, I set those records but I hope someday that I will be moved down because there are some kids that saw me up there and act like how I was acting toward those guys on the board.”
While Gdovichin has run his last cross country race as a Huskie, his work is not finished as he plans to put the finishing touches on a memorable senior campaign by also landing a state berth in the track season as a distance runner in the Spring of 2026.
“It will be pretty difficult but if I can have a good time training this winter and then go into track feeling good once the weather gets nicer, hopefully we will see something happen there but only time will tell,” he said.
