The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Lorain County reigns in Classic
For most of the second boys race at the Lake Erie XC Classic on Sept. 5, Fairview’s Nolan Krumhansl and Ben Osborne were neck-and-neck for first and second place.
That changed in the final mile, as Krumhansl pulled away, crossing the finish line at 16:23.
When he crossed the finish line, Krumhansl fell on his knees to catch his breath. He didn’t get much time to catch his breath, however. As soon as Osborne crossed the finish line four seconds later, he made a beeline to Krumhansl to celebrate.
“Let’s go,” Osborne yelled, and he tackled Krumhansl to the ground in celebration. “Your first dub of the season.”
Krumhansl and Osbrone’s celebration was one of many at the Lake Erie Classic’s inaugural running, which featured 19 teams from Lake, Cuyahoga and Erie counties.
“I just wanted to provide kids with a safe opportunity to compete and race,” race organizer and Vermilion coach Ryan Ladd said. “It’s a different twist of three teams being on the starting line and being from different counties.”
Originally, Ladd and the Sailors were scheduled to be at the Bowling Green Invitational. After that and the Avon Lake Early Bird — which was also scheduled for Sept. 5 — were canceled, Ladd reached out to area coaches to see if they’d be interested in competing that weekend. Within an hour reaching out, Ladd had filled up all the spots.
“I love this,” Ladd said. “I have a lot of experience in managing events, and that’s really what I get excited about. Besides being with the kids every day, managing a meet is probably one of my favorite things. It’s all about providing everyone with a great experience and giving people one of their favorite days of the cross country season. It really wasn’t that difficult — we just had to ask some of our volunteers for a longer day.”
Ladd divided the teams up into six groups with boys and girls races, with each race featuring a team from the different counties. The team that finished with the best score in the race won a point for their county. Lorain County won with nine points, while Erie County tallied two and Cuyahoga County had one.
Aside from that, all the other changes were small logistical changes made to the course.
“We widened some areas in the woods and then just made sure that there were less runners and teams,” Ladd said. “Those were the things that changed. We had larger starting boxes for each team and a space in between each team. We’re using an app where we don’t have to have any contact with the kids, which is great.”
The best time came in the first race when Amherst’s Ty Perez finished the course in 16:20, follow closely by Vermilion’s Luke See, who finished with 16:39. Overall, Ladd was happy with his team’s performance.
“Our first meet as a dual meet against Perkins, and sometimes in dual meets you’ll end up alone by yourself and stuck in no man’s land,” Ladd said. “But today we were in a race with Amherst and Lutheran West, and I felt we competed really well. I’m really excited about Luke’s race today; I think he’s really in the right set of mind moving forward. We’ll get better. This was a great benchmark for us.”
The next best time came from Avon Lake’s Matt Henry, who finished the course in 17:01. In the Shoreman’s first meet last weekend, Henry and his teammates were unhappy with how they came out and raced. That wasn’t the case in the classic, as almost all of Henry’s teammates finished in under 22 minutes.
“Last week didn’t exactly go so well, so coming into this race we were really looking to redeem ourselves,” Henry said. “I
was pretty angry about last week, so I was kind of running with some anger.”
The next best time came from Open Door’s Michel Couture, who won the final boys race with a time of 17:45 — nearly two minutes faster than the runner who finished in second. While Couture was happy with his time, he as also hampered by being so far ahead of everyone.
“It’s tough because you don’t have anyone to base your pace off of,” he said. “Luckily I was able to keep my pace steady the entire time.”
On the girls side, Columbia’s Madeline Finton had the best time with a 19:59, a feat even more impressive considering she went with a new game plan on hanging back during the first mile and a half of the course.
“That really helped me settle in, and then I went my own pace for the last mile and tried to match my splits from last week,” she said. “It’s tough, but it all comes down to your mental toughness.”
Other area girls winners include Amherst’s Marisa Del Valle (21:18) and Elyria’s Jackie Sopko (21:58). Brookside’s Madison Palmer also finished second in her heat with a time of 21:10.
The Classic was the season opener for Sopko and the Pioneers, something she used as motivation.
“This was my first race of the year, so I really wanted to give it my all,” she said. “This was my chance to do the best I could and hopefully the start of a really good season.”
After all of the uncertainty surrounding the start of the Classic — along with the cross country season in general, Ladd was ecstatic to be able to give area runners the opportunity to compete.
“You can turn the clock off; cross country isn’t about time, it’s about competing and passing people,” he said. “If you want to know how fast you run three miles, go to the track and run 12 laps. Cross country is about competing, and I think we did that today.”