October 5, 2006 Issue                                       

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©2006 The Chestnut Hill Local

Mount runners outshine Jems, get by Gwynedd
by TOM UTESCHER

Thanks to a pair of league victories in the last two weeks of September, Mount St. Joseph Academy’s cross country team enters this week’s clash with St. Basil’s with a 3-0 dual-meet record in the Athletic Association of Catholic Academies.

On September 19 the Magic captured the top seven places in a race at Villa Joseph Marie to shut out the Jems, 15-50, and in a much closer contest last Tuesday, Mount St. Joe knocked off visiting Gwynedd Mercy Academy, 25-32.

The Mount squad has also performed well in multi-team invitational meets so far this season, winning the Mill Street Run in Bristol on September 9, and placing fifth in the Division II race at the Briarwood Scholastic Invitational, held at Philadelphia’s Belmont Plateau on September 16.

Mount freshman Tori Perri finished second in both of these meets; at Briarwood, which attracted a number of out-of-state runners, she came in less than a second behind Kesha Brooks, a senior from Liberty Benton High School in Findlay, OH.

Perri, whose sister Gina is a junior at the Mount and a member of the crew team, is one of a number of talented ninth graders running for the Magic this fall. Four of them, in fact, placed among the top 12 in the recent dual meet at Villa Joseph Marie.

The Jems’ home course was a long one, just shy of 3.2 miles, and Perri crossed the finish line unchallenged in 21 minutes and one second. MSJ senior tri-captain Chelsea Clark was also running alone, taking second place in 22:40, but after her came five MSJ runners in the 23-minute bracket. They were, in order, sophomore Emma Pacheco (23:02), junior Becky Tate (23:11), senior Casey Lumpkin (23:12), freshman Meghan Cheek (23:14), and sophomore Sarah Collier (23:19).

Villa Joe senior Tara Mastoris was the first member of the host team to complete the course, coming in eighth overall in 24:01. Rounding out the top dozen were Mount senior tri-captain Genevieve O’Mara (24:18) and freshman teammate Alex Zanetti (24:24), Jems sophomore Cait McDonald (24:26), and Magic freshman Brionna O’Connor (24:27).

Last Tuesday’s Gwynedd meet presented the toughest challenge the Magic had faced up to that point; no one at the Mount could remember the locals ever defeating the Monarchs in a dual meet. However, the showdown was robbed of some of its drama due to the fact that Gwynedd’s number one runner, Kelly McEldrew, was watching the race from the finish line propped up by a pair of crutches. The GMA junior had dislocated her kneecap during the Briarwood race ten days earlier.

Perri breezed to victory on the Mount’s 3.1-mile course in 20 minutes and 29 seconds, and might have come close to the 20-minute mark if some of the marker flags at the soccer team’s practice field had not been moved, causing a number of the runners to stray off the course briefly. In a key performance for the Magic, Clark came in second in 21:23, topping the first three finishers for Gwynedd, junior Erin Mee (21:36), and seniors Jill Buck and Jessica Drewicz. MSJ’s Lumpkin, Pacheco, and Collier placed sixth, seventh, and ninth, respectively to complete the hosts’ victory.

RACE RESULTS

1 MSJ Tori Perri 20:29

2 MSJ Chelsea Clark 21:23

3 GMA Erin Mee 21:36

4 GMA Jill Buck 21:44

5 GMA Jessica Drewicz 22:18

6 MSJ Casey Lumpkin 22:34

7 MSJ Emma Pacheco 22:37

8 GMA Kate Rodgers 22:41

9 MSJ Sarah Collier 22:42

10 MSJ Becky Tate 23:10

11 MSJ Meghan Cheek 23:12

12 MSJ Genevieve O’Mara 23:21

13 MSJ Liz Welsh 23:34

14 GMA Christina Donnelly 23:42

15 GMA Kristina Kramer 23:56

16 MSJ Alex Zanetti 24:14

17 MSJ Brionna O’Connor 24:19

18 MSJ Erica Braun 24:21

19 GMA Laura Vernon 24:54

20 MSJ Maureen Pedicino 25:11