Cross Country Team finish 5th at Regionals as Eagles conclude season
11/25/17 – Cary, NC – By Andy Carr
The cross country boys team from Milton (5th-155 pts) concluded their season today with a hard-fought fifth place team finish out of 32 scoring schools at the Nike South East Regional meet in Cary, NC. With many state championship schools competing from VA, DE, DC, NC, SC, WV, KY, TN, FL, etc., the top-2 teams automatically qualified for the national championship meet to be held in Portland, Oregon on December 2nd. The Jungle TC/Loudon Valley (VA) (1st-72 pts) easily won the meet with Bulldog XC /The Bolles School (FL) (2nd-118 pts) as runner-up. The Eagles kept in close in the team race as seniors Sam Bowers (5th-15:09) & Nicholas Yanek (6th-15:09) paced the team effort with the highest finishes at this meet in school history. In doing so, they individually qualified for the National meet as Top-5 overall finishers NOT on the first or second place team! Milton has not qualified any runner to a national high school meet since Ian Dickinson went to the Footlocker National Meet in 1999. Bowers and Yanek will leave in the next few days to race the country’s best at the Nike Cross Nationals at Glendoveer Golf Course in Beaverton, OR, hosted by Nike.
In the team race, Western Cary TC/Green Hope (NC) (3rd-125 pts) was a strong 3rd and secured an at-large bid to attend the National Championships. They were followed by Louisville Xtreme/St Xavier (KY) (4th-145 pts) who also bested the Eagles. Milton could not overcome a very large gap between its national qualifiers and its strong pack, as the Eagles had seniors Michael Malkowski (50th-16:02), Dru Milton (62nd-16:05) & Ryan Beitzell (85th-16:16) concluded the Milton scoring. Junior Luke Bonneville (121st-16:32) and freshman Hayden Marshall (123rd-16:33) also competed for the teams 5th place effort and final race 2017 season.
