Conference 21A Boys’ Cross Country

Posted: October 29, 2015
By ROBERT STOCKS
The Winchester Star

PURCELLVILLE — Sherando seniors Trevor Whiteside, Thomas Shea, Thomas Powars and James Kelly were two-year-olds when the Warriors last won a postseason race.

Fifteen years later, those four seniors along with junior Hayden Williams finally put the Warriors back on top by taking first place at the Conference 21A cross country championship on a rain-soaked course at Woodgrove High School on Wednesday.

Whiteside, who came in third place overall in 16 minutes, 38 seconds, led three Sherando runners in the top 12. Shea placed ninth (17:10), Williams came in 11th (17:20) and Kelly and Powars followed in 16th and 17th, respectively, to help the Warriors edge Millbrook, which had senior Tyler Cox-Philyaw and junior Alec Schrank sweep the top two spots, by just three points (56-59).

Harrisonburg (78) also advanced to regionals in third. Woodgrove (79) came in fourth, Handley (88) followed in fifth and James Wood (111) placed sixth.

Whiteside said Millbrook made it a much tighter than expected.

“We thought we had it by a good 10 points or maybe a little bit more, but [three] points, that’s really close,” said Whiteside, who led Sherando to its first postseason title since the Warriors won the Commonwealth District championship in 2000. “That’s actually really scary because when we get to regionals and states we’ve got to push a little bit harder and we’ve got to know that they’re right on our tail.”

Sherando has won a few regular season district titles, winning those in 2005, 2006 and 2008, but the Warriors finished as the runner-up to Brentsville in each of those years in the postseason district meets.

Warriors coach Jamie McCarty said he was pleased his team ended its postseason drought despite not having its strongest performance.

“I don’t think we were exactly where we needed to be and we were a little off,” McCarty said. “Obviously that comes back to me and maybe doing things a little bit differently before regionals.

“When you’re the defending champs you’re not going to let go of that reign easily and we knew we were going to get a pretty good shot from [Millbrook]. They ran really well and forced us to run well.”

The Pioneers, the two-time defending conference champs, certainly made it interesting.

While the Warriors won their first team title in 15 years, Cox-Philyaw powered his way to his first conference championship with a winning time of 16:15.

Philyaw, who was the conference runner-up to Schrank last year, led from start to finish and steadily pulled away from there. He led Schrank by four seconds after the opening mile and then by the middle of the race extended that margin to six seconds.

Cox-Philyaw finished 15 seconds ahead of Schrank and 23 seconds clear of Whiteside. Handley senior Aaron Arslan followed in fourth (16:42) and Woodgrove’s Aedan Pettit (16:43) rounded out the top five.

“I was feeling good so I took it out [early] and I kind of conserved the second mile and that’s when Alec came up within about 10 yards or something like that,” said Cox-Philyaw. “Then in the last mile I pretty much just hammered the whole thing from the last mile or half mile.

“It feels good to finally get a conference title in cross country because I’ve never gotten one before. It definitely feels good to go out on top.”

Heading into the race, Millbrook coach Kevin Shirk hoped to have his top five as close to Cox-Philyaw and Schrank as possible and Tom Carty (12th, 17:26) and Justin Wiseman (15th, 17:38) came through with strong performances.

“I thought we could probably get within five to 10 points of them so we were closer than I thought we’d be,” Shirk said. “[Sherando] just has more depth than we do.

“We’re strong up front — they’re strong one through five and that’s kind of where they were able to shine today. We put four in the top 15 and they put their No. 5 in 17th place. It’s hard to compete against that. Lots of credit to them. They’ve had a good season. Out of their seven, five are seniors so it’s kind of cool to see. We’ve had a couple good years so it’s kind of cool seeing Sherando have a solid year with a bunch of seniors.”

Arslan led a trio of Handley qualifiers for next Thursday’s 4A West Regional at the Smith River Sports Complex in Martinsville.

Handley’s John Delaney (10th, 17:12) and Bennett Crow (13th, 17:32) finished in the top 15 to medal and earn a berth in next week’s regional meet.

James Wood junior Max Lindquist (14th, 17:34) will be the Colonels’ lone regional qualifier.

— Contact Robert Stocks at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

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