Runaway champs: Magnificat romps to another cross country title, SVSM wins D-II

Tim Rogers, Plain Dealer Reporter, November 08, 2009 12:14 a.m.

Magnificat’s Madeline Chambers (529) and the rest of the best Division I high school cross country runners in the state run for a championship Saturday in Columbus. Chambers would finish second, Magnificat first. - (Lonnie Timmons III/The Plain Dealer)

CVCA’s Christina Blair heads for the finish line and the Division II individual championship. The Royals finished third in the team standings. - (Lonnie Timmons III/The Plain Dealer)

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Move over Babe Ruth. You, too, Joe Namath.

Make room for coach Anjanette Arabian Whitman and her magnificent Magnificat cross country team. When it comes to calling your shots, Arabian Whitman takes a back seat to no one.

The Blue Streaks ran themselves into oblivion Saturday during the state cross country meet at Scioto Downs. Oblivion, as in out of sight from the rest of the field and anyone else.

Magnificat won its second straight Division I state championship with a mind-boggling 28 points, the lowest point total in the 32 years the OHSAA has conducted a girls state meet. The Streaks won by a whopping 109 points, outdistancing runner-up Springboro. The previous low winning total was 33 points by Beaumont in 1995.

Perhaps even more mind-boggling was that Arabian Whitman called her team's shot, just like the Babe called his home run shot in Chicago and Broadway Joe predicted victory in Super Bowl III. According to Arabian Whitman, it was just a matter of doing your math.

"We call it running calculus," she said. "If you have a couple of hours I can explain it all to you. Briefly, I sat down and looked at the times and estimated what we could do. I came up with 28, so that was our goal."

The senior-dominated Streaks weren't the only area champions on a sunny day accompanied by, at times, a 25 mph wind that most runners said they felt but didn't struggle with.

St. Vincent-St. Mary won its first state championship in Division II with 98 points and Cuyahoga Valley Christian Academy junior Christina Blair was the lone individual state champ when she won the Division II title in a time of 18:39.71, pacing the Royals to a third-place finish. St. Clairsville was second with 105 points.

SVSM unseated CVCA for the Division II team title when junior Maria Arnone and senior Emily Tomei finished seventh and ninth, respectively, and its other five runners finished in the top 92.

Blair, who enrolled at CVCA when her family relocated to the area last summer from Indiana, became the second consecutive runner from her school to win the Division II title, following Katie Gillespie.

Blair ignored coach George Hallis' advice not to take the lead and be the first runner into the wind.

"She ran a good race," Hallis said. "She knew it was windy out there and I told her she had to run smart, to tuck in behind somebody [to break the wind]. She told me she didn't run like that, so I told her not to let anyone get close and tuck in behind her and that's what she did."

SVSM was surprised it was able to win.

"I don't think we ran as well as we could have," said Arnone, whose seventh-place finish (19:19.64) paced the Irish. "So, after the race we all said a little prayer, hoping we'd finish second or third. When they announced we finished first we all were asking, 'Did they announce that right?' "

Said teammate Molly Miloscia, "It was surreal when we were standing on the podium."

Surreal could be used to describe Magnificat's performance, in which five of its seven runners finished 21st or better.

Senior Madeline Chambers finished second (18:07.35), a little more than three seconds behind Sylvania Northview's Meredith Wagner, whose time of 18:03.95 was the fastest in any division. Magnificat twins Clare and Abby Fischer were seventh and eighth, respectively, sophomore Abigail Marquard was 20th and senior Erin Riley ran a personal-best 19:11.67 to finish 21st to complete the scorers.

"We just wanted to come out and race like we always do," said Chambers, who entered the meet ranked second in the state by oh.milesplit.us behind North Royalton's Hannah Neczypor.

Neczypor, who beat Chambers by six seconds in last week's regional, was third in 18:15.30.

Chambers' plan was to stay near the lead. She never held the lead, jockeying between second and third.

"I felt pretty good during the race, but I never totally got comfortable because it was a hard race," she said.

Chambers might not have been comfortable, but the Streaks were. Comfortable winners.