Congratulations to our Pine-Richland runners who ran in the WPIAL Championship race at California University of PA October 24th!
We had a fantastic meet! It was a great day and we appreciate all of the great support from our PR families and team members who weren’t competing but cheered on their teammates yesterday. It ended up being a warm, sunny day, much different than last week.
Our girls team placed 4th overall out of 30 teams in the very competitive AAA division, just narrowly missing qualifying for the PIAA State Championships by one place. It was tied for our best team place for the girls team since the early 1990s. It was the 3rd time since 1996 that the girls team finished 4th, also finishing 4th in 2010 and 2011. Up until cross country split into 3 classifications 7 years ago, there were 4 teams from AAA that qualified.
Congratulations to Natalie M for her 11th place finish and Meredith P for her 12th place finish, the highest places for PR girls at WPIALS in 19 years! Since moving to the higher AAA classification in 1998, only one girl has finished higher with a 10th place finish in 2000.
Congratulations to Natalie and Meredith for qualifying individually for states and earning medals for finishing in the top 15!
Our other girl runners also had great races. Elizabeth H just missed qualifying for states by 2 places. She tied for 32nd place. After removing runners from the results from the 3 qualifying teams, runners are reseeded and the top 15 individuals go to states: Natalie was 5th. Meredith was 6th. Elizabeth finished 17th, catching 13 runners during the last mile of the race and just came up short of making states.
Annabelle N, Stella F, Breanna F and Audrey D also had impressive finishes and great seasons.
Our girls team finished 5 wins 2 losses in section meets and tied for 2nd in our conference with North Allegheny and Butler. Our section is the strongest section with 4 out of the top 5 AAA WPIAL teams coming from our section.
Our boys team placed 14th out of 31 teams, improving 3 spots from last year. Our top finisher Victor W was 49th and had a great race and wasn’t far off from qualifying for states. Nick L had a strong race and finished 68th. Quinn P, Chris F, Nick K, Max H and George N all had impressive races and great seasons.
Our boys team finished 3 wins 4 losses in the section. Our section is the strongest section in the WPIAL with all 3 state qualifying teams coming from our section.
Also, Natalie was the 2nd freshman and Breanna was the 8th freshman at WPIALs. Nick was the 10th freshman boy at WPIALS.
Good luck to Meredith and Natalie at states next Saturday in Hershey!