CHARLOTTESVILLE — While New Palestine’s Devon Whitaker and Greenfield-Central’s Conner Kinnaman renewed an old rivalry at the front of the field, Mt. Vernon was winning the race.
Seniors Whitaker and Kinnaman, friendly competitors since their middle school days, finished 1-2 in Tuesday’s Hancock County Boys Cross-Country Meet at Eastern Hancock High School, but it was a pack of Marauders that took home the team title.
Mt. Vernon’s top runner, Reyce Morgan, finished fourth, and the Marauders followed with positions six through 10 for a convincing victory.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]Click here to purchase photos from this gallery
The Marauders scored 34 points. New Palestine was second with 50, while Greenfield-Central finished with 62. Host Eastern Hancock scored 88.
It’s Mt. Vernon’s 11th county title and first since 2015 for longtime coach Bruce Kendall.
“It was a good win for us,” Kendall said. “We’ve had six different guys be No. 1 for us. We never know who it is going to be.”
Having that close competition was key for the Marauders in a four-team race on Tuesday.
With team scores including the top five runners, the Marauders were able to get all of their scorers in the top 10.
“The fifth runner finishing farther up was the difference,” Kendall added. “Sometimes you win because the fifth runner is so far up. Having the first two runners is huge. Even though New Palestine and Greenfield had two runners way out there, they didn’t benefit from it. There was no mob in there. If there were more schools, they would have benefitted from that.”
The Marauders ran together and all the way to a team title, but it was Whitaker that was able to pull away to win the individual crown.
“(Winning county) is something I have thought about since middle school,” Whitaker said. “Conner and I have gone back and forth over the last six years. The county meet is always something I’ve been circling.
“I’ve been planning this race in my head for a while now, and it worked out pretty much how (my coach and I) wanted it to. The big thing was to stay relaxed in the beginning, let (Kinnaman) do most of the work and then once I thought I was in a position to pull away from him to take advantage of that.”
Whitaker finished the 5K in 17:00.79. Kinnaman followed at 17:16.62. NP’s Colin Darley was third in 17:37.44.
“In middle school we ran really close to each other all the time. It was races like this every time we ran,” Kinnaman said of his competition with Whitaker. “When we came to high school, I started to pull away. Today was a really good race for him and a bad race for me.”
Only 25 seconds separated the fourth to 10th place positions. The first Marauder to finish was Morgan, with a time of 17:40.89.
All top 10 runners earned all-county recognition. Six of those spots were taken by Mt. Vernon runners. Following Morgan, the sixth through 10th positions went to Colin Brown (6, 17:42.08), Tyler Strantz (7, 17:46.00), Evan Rappe (8, 17:53.04), Austin Rush (9, 18:04.13) and Jacob Benz (10, 18:05.83).
The only runner able to break up the pack of Marauders was Eastern Hancock’s Nick Edwards, who finished fifth in 17:41.41.
