Thursday, March 28, 2024
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Mounts finish season at Districts


ImageHeading into the District three Cross Country Championships held Monday afternoon at the Parkview Golf Course in Hershey, Ephrata's Alicia Harbold was the local favorite to advance to the State Cross Country Meet.

Afterall, Harbold has made the trip to States the last two years and as a senior has been one of the Lady Mounts' top performers.

Well, despite running an excellent time of 20:54.92, the EHS senior fell victim to a numbers game.

Although she finished 49th overall, she missed the State cutoff by just 11 places. The top five teams and 30 individuals qualified to move on, but just eight runners from the top five teams were included among the top 30 individuals, which is a low number. That left only eight extra runners or 38 total, which will advance.

Despite the disappointment, Ephrata Coach Steve Sweigart was pleased with Harbold's performance.

"Alicia Harbold was the closest on either of our teams to qualify," Sweigart said. "She had a real good effort, but she just came up 11 places short."

While Harbold's performance was Ephrata's personal best, the Lady Mounts as a team turned in a solid 12th place showing, finishing with 387 points. Four of Ephrata's top five placed in the top 100. In addition to Harbold, Jaime Singer was next in 69th place with a time of 21:13.86, followed by Dana Haas (70th, 21:15.34) and Brynn Lyons (98th, 21:44.31). Samantha Fink (143rd, 22:19.32) and Kate Anderson (194th, 23:01.64) rounded out the team scoring for Ephrata.

In the L-L League the Mounts finished behind Manheim Township (1st) and Hempfield (6th), while out-running Cedar Crest (16th), Solanco (17th) and Warwick (18th).

On the boys' side, Brad Sweigart was the lone Ephrata runner to place in the top 100 as the Mounts finished 24th overall out of 51 teams. He placed 66th overall with a time of 17:54.24. Other EHS runners in the top five included: Cordell Oberholtzer (123rd, 18:27.76); Givi Palagashvili (146th, 18:38.55); Mickey Molchaney 181st, 18:52.88); Andrew Redcay (197th, 19:00.27) and Ryan Trella (249th, 19:32.37).

Freshmen Mickey Molchaney was the 13th freshmen to cross the finish line.