La Plata cross country boys, girls prevail on senior day

On a day when its seniors were clearly in the spotlight, the La Plata High School boys and girls participants on the cross country both took the top two spots in a meet also involving Northern and Westlake although a pair of underclassmen spoiled the party.

La Plata sophomores Trevor Thompson and Lucas Alarie swept the top two spots in the boys meet finishing well clear of Northern’s Caleb Graves-Reher and Warriors’ teammate Colin Tekeuchi on Oct. 2.

Westlake’s Damien Gore finished 10th in the best showing for a Wolverines’ male runner at the meet.

Thompson, who won the boys event in 17 minutes, 54.15 seconds, and Alarie (17:59.40) bided their time through the first mile then picked up the pace in the second and third miles when they surpassed Graves-Reher (18:17.69). Their one-two finish keyed a comfortable victory over both the Patriots and Wolverines and briefly put the underclassmen in the spotlight.

“We’ve basically been running that way the whole season,” said Thompson, who also played baseball for the school last spring. “I usually like to have someone to run at for the first mile. Then the second mile me and Lucas dropped the Northern runner and went on from there. Now I am hoping to place top five at [the Southern Maryland Athletic Conference Championship on Oct. 23 at Jefferson Patterson Park], then hope to be top 15 at the state meet [at Hereford High School].”

In the girls’ meet that followed, La Plata seniors Caroline Earnshaw (23:09.59) and Madison Rybarczyk (23:16.96) easily occupied the top two spots while their teammates completed the next seven places. Northern’s Caroline David (25:45.10) was 10th, while Westlake’s lone female runner, Chloe Stanford (32.49.43), placed 20th.

Earnshaw, who is also a member of the school’s field hockey team and heading to Frostburg University for that sport, picked the ideal time to make her cross country debut. Competing in her very first meet, the soft-spoken Earnshaw bested 19 rivals to finish seven seconds clear of her closest teammate.

“This was the first meet ever for me,” Earnshaw noted. “I decided to take a break from field hockey today and run in this meet. The first mile I felt really strong and the second mile I was still going pretty well. But that third mile was rough.