FELTON — A ninth grader from Milford established herself as one of Delaware’s elite distance runners with a runaway victory in the Joe O’Neill Invitational on Friday afternoon at Killens Pond State Park.
Paige Ballinger, who burst into statewide prominence last year as an eighth grader at Sussex Academy when she had the fifth-fastest time at the state championships, won Friday’s race by nearly 200 meters in 18:08, this time as a ninth grader at Padua Academy.
The event is the state’s largest cross country meet.
Her 27-second winning margin was the latest triumph in a breakthrough frosh season. Last weekend, Ballinger won the freshman 2,400-meter race at the Manhattan Invitational, her 8:54.9 time breaking a meet record that had stood for 20 years.
A week earlier, she finished third in a 59-school field to pace her team to a victory at the Carlisle (Pa.) Invitational, where she finished 10 seconds behind Tatnall’s three-time all-state senior Katie Payne.
The daughter of a Padua graduate, Ballinger pined to attend her mother’s school. On reaching ninth grade, she was old enough to enroll at the Wilmington girls’ school, whose runners have won the last 11 Division I championships and produced the first-place finisher at each of the 11.
The Pandas’ most-recent state champion, Anna Bockius, now a junior, is the daughter of Dover’s 1993 state mile champion, Troy Bockius.
Bockius, like Payne and two-time boys’ state champion Ethan Walther skipped Friday’s meet because it occurred just five days after the Manhattan Invitational.
Still, the meet lived up to its reputation as the mid-season highlight of the cross country season, the only meet where every school in Delaware competes in a single race.
Ballinger flew through the Killens woods in personal record pace, with no serious contender after the first quarter mile. The former wing in soccer now hones her winged foot on a Padua team deep in talent, placing four other runners in the top 20 to win the girls title.
“Last year I wasn’t as used to running with people at all,” said Ballinger, who was three minutes faster than any other Seahawk teammate. “This year, having people on my back, even at practice, has been an adjustment. It’s really positive, with people pushing me a lot.”
Ben Pizarro, the state 3200-meter champion, led Tatnall to the team title, leaving Jason Baker of Cape Henlopen behind in the second mile to win in a commanding 15:27. He maintained a five-minute pace through each mile.
“I was just trying to stick on him,” said Baker, who finished third to Pizarro as a sophomore in last spring’s Meet of Champions. “I had seen what he has done before. I knew he was really good, so I wanted to stick with him as long as possible.
“We were both really good through the mile, then he made a move after the mile and I just couldn’t hang.”
Left behind by Pizarro, Baker adjusted. “I was in no-man’s-land by myself. I told myself to keep pushing because I knew there were some pretty good runners behind me and I didn’t want to get caught,” he said.
Baker maintained second place, fending off state 1600-meter champion Colby Twyman of Tower Hill, Griff Spana of Caesar Rodney and Peter Bird of St. Andrew’s, and leading the Vikings to a third-place finish.
Pizarro built his 20-second victory in the second mile, accelerating through the course’s main hill. He had been nagged with injuries in previous summers, “but I think that was because I was growing,” said Pizarro “I think I’ve figured that out. This is the first summer where I’ve been able to run consistently.”
“I did not expect this at all,” CR’s Spana of his fourth-place finish. Hoping to finish in the top 15 in 16:20, he ran 15:55, nearly 40 seconds faster than when he helped the Riders win this meet last year at the faster Bellevue course.
Now a co-captain as a junior, Spana led practices on weekdays this summer at Brecknock Park. “Our team bonding is strong,” he said.
St. Andrew’s took second behind Peter (fifth) and Henry Bird (seventh). Kevin Howard of Middletown (ninth) was the other Downstate runner in the top ten.
In the girls’ race, Independent Conference runners took six of the top eight places. Catherine Farnan (fifth) and Izzy Daniel (sixth) led Tower Hill to a best-ever second-place showing.
Leah Horgan (second) and Maggie Baker (seventh) paced St. Andrew’s to third place.
Held since 1999 at Bellevue State Park north of Wilmington and renamed in 2009 for the longtime St. Mark’s coach, the meet moved this year to Killens, which will host the state championship meet on Nov. 9. Bellvue is undergoing construction.
Chuck Durante is a free-lance writer living in Wilmington.
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