Since leaving the Portage Trail Conference, the Crestwood Red Devils’ cross-country team has not had many chances to compete against their former conference and county rivals during the regular season. But the Red Devil girls placed second with a team score of 51 points while the boys also finished as runners-up by scoring 71 points at the second annual Streetsboro Rockets Invitational last Saturday at Streetsboro Middle School.
“It was a great day,” said Coach Jim Schweickert. “It is hard to have a day like this with cross country because there are so many factors that go into the day. We probably had 2/3 of the team that ran their career-best times and then we had several others who had their best time for this particular season and were pretty close to hitting their career best time as well.”
According to the 14-year coach, racing against most of their former Portage Trail Conference rivals brought back a lot of nostalgia.
“We see teams at a lot of places but there are so many bigger meets and you only get lost in the shuffle, you can’t really tell one team from another,” said Schweickert. “You don’t know how you stack up so there are not that many meets out there where it is heavy on Portage County-type schools so that makes it fun too.”
Crestwood propelled itself to second place with a 2-4-8-11-26 finish, only 13 points behind Portage County rival Ravenna Southeast, which scored 38 points with a 1-3-7-12-15 finish.
“We do not have a lot of depth, so we talk about a lot of pack-running,” noted the 14-year coach. “A mile into the race we had four girls running together before they strung out a little bit so that pack has come together and that is counting the fact that sophomore Piper Freedline ran a career personal record by two minutes, she just decided to go for it.”
Sophomore Piper Seibold took second place with a time of 19:46.19, followed by sophomore Maddie Grace Gonczy who finished in fourth place by clocking a time of 20:34.58, senior Erin Hallis placed eighth with a time of 21:01.71, Freedline came in 11th place by posting a time of 21:22.20 and senior Kennedy Rhodes took 27th place with a time of 23.15.36.
Schweickert said that after an offseason filled with more running workouts, Seibold is well ahead of where she was at this time last season.
“She is a four-sport athlete and plays volleyball, basketball and runs track so she is actively in shape somewhat all year, but she is in better shape this year,” he added. “What she ran on Saturday was probably 25-30 seconds faster than last year on that same course and she was only maybe 10 seconds from her career personal record. She is looking really good.”
On the boys’ side, they rallied in the last half mile of the race to finish in second place with a 6-8-13-20-24 finish, edging Portage County foe Streetsboro by three points.
“It was close like we thought it would be,” Schweickert said. “We had a couple of kids that put on a really strong finish and pass a number of people that bumped us up to second so it was a competitive race.”
Senior Augie Schweickert came in sixth place with a time of 17:11.50, followed by senior Kevin Vechery who placed eighth by clocking 17:49.99, junior Garrett Byers crossed the finish line in 13th place with a time of 18:14.16, junior Austin Wurm took 20th place with a time of 18:31.87 and freshman Evan Rhodes came in 25th place by clocking 18:49.80.
Coach Schweickert said that Augie dictated Crestwood’s pace with an aggressive start in the first mile, going at least 20 seconds faster than he usually starts and that strategy paid off by staying with the front pack for the majority of the race.
“He was with that front pack and was able to compete with them throughout that whole race and did not have to play a lot of catch-up in the race so it was good for him to break through and try to go out a little bit harder and see how it went,” he noted.
Ultimately, each Crestwood boy picked up the pace in the final half mile to pick off several runners and secure a second-place finish.
The Red Devils will hit the road to compete in the Spartan Invitational at Boardman High School in Youngstown this Saturday beginning at 9 a.m.
