Donahue, Dwyer pick up victories
coach Mark Shelley said. “He trained with focus, but didn’t overwork it.”
Donahue credited the win to Rist, who was in the lead for most of the race.
“He’s the pacer,” Donahue said of Rist. “I kind of zone out, so it’s so valuable to have a teammate that’s good with (pacing).”
Coming down the final hill, Donahue made his move to take the lead for good.
“Once we got out the woods, I just piled it on,” he said. “I have more speed than him - we know it’s in good fun- he beats me on hills. I was able to beat him because it was a flatter course.”
West Windsor North’s Bryan Howard crossed the finish line three seconds after Rist to take third place. Alex Roth and Karl Bjorkman joined Rist and Donahue in the top 10, finishing in sixth and eighth respectively. The Knights filled out the rest of the field and as a team, narrowly defeated the Tigers, 28-29, to win the meet. Princeton entered the race with five of its top nine runners sitting out due to injury or illness, Shelley said.
“This is the point in the year where we race twice a week now, so we decided to rest some people,” Shelley said. “We had some guys score for us who hadn’t scored all year, they had to step up and they ran well.”
One the girls side, the race was decidedly less dramatic. Nottingham’s Grace Dwyer, the reigning county champ, finished with a time of 18:37, a safe distance ahead of second-place finisher Lou Mialhe. Dwyer pulled away from the pack as they entered the woods not very far from the starting line.
“I just wanted to have a really good race,” Dwyer said.
The sophomore has picked up where she left off last season, where she went all the way to the Meet of Champions and finished in eighth place. She recorded her third first-place finish in two weeks at Veterans Park.
“She’s right where she needs to be, she’s working hard, she’s training like she’s supposed to and she’s stayed in control in every race,” Nottingham coach Melissa Brio said.