BAY VILLAGE, Ohio (Oct. 14, 2023) -- Saturday's cross country action at Cahoon Park in Bay Village felt like it had some spill-over effect from
an event held a few blocks west of Cahoon the night prior. What developed was something similar: Rocky River edging rival Bay in a marvelous athletic battle with much on the line. Saturday's version of the War by the Shore was the Great Lakes Conference Championship. On the boys side, the Rocky River Pirates won a GLC title, eclipsing the Bay Rockets by a mere five points in the final standings. [
Boys Results |
Girls Results]
The River girls placed second, losing to Westlake by the same margin on what was a chilled and soggy Saturday on the North Coast.
In the boys competition, with every placement holding the highest degreee of importance, the Maroon & White had six runners earn top-15 slots. The Pirates' five-man score was a tidy 44. Bay was on their heels at 49.
Rockets junior Michael Hanselman won the race, clocking five-minute miles over the spritzed Cahoon Park landscape and crossing the wire in 15:30.6. With Bay runners also finishing seventh, 12th, and 13th, the Rockets would be tough to beat.
Enter senior Grant Preto, who gave the Buccaneers a jolt with a third-place finish at 15:58.2. Then came the trio of Ruairi Zuercher, Henry Lange, and Jackson Rood, who blazed a boom-boom-boom finish at 7-8-9. River's fifth and sixth men -- Ben Buehrle, Ryan Stirm -- beat Bay's fifth, and the Pirates closed out their fourth consecutive triumph in the GLC's title event.
The winning margin marked the closest in a GLC Championship race since 2016, when Bay slid past River 26-29.
The Rocky River girls had all five runners earn top-11 placements, but they were bested by a talented Westlake group that logged the win (senior Sarah Peer by nearly a minute with her 17:46.7) and five top-10s. River senior Brianna Chavez-Bernal clocked a runner-up time of 18:43.1, which was 26.6 seconds ahead of third-place teammate Grace Lavelle.
Jane Rathbun (fifth), Katie Stirm (10th), and Brooke Hogan (11th) rounded out Rocky River's scoring.
The event included 11 teams and 76 runners on the boys' side and 10 teams and 67 runners on the girls'.
CANNON FIRE ...
RAPID RIVER: Pirate runners Vincent Valente and Will Coleman took first and third, respectively, in Saturday's open boys race. In the girls open, the Double-R had runners place second (Grace DeWitt) and fourth (Allie Dewey).
TWAIN REIGN: The Great Lakes Conference was launced in 2015. Rocky River or Bay has won each of the circuit's nine championship titles (Rocky River 5, Bay 4). The two programs have finished 1-2 eight times.
by Skip Snow