Girls' cross country notebook: Wood's Konyar shines in postseason debut

WINCHESTER — Following the Third Battle Invitational on Oct. 15, James Wood coach Matthew Lofton said the absence of freshman Kate Konyar due to illness might have played a role in the Colonels not performing their best, because they didn’t have their No. 1 runner to feed off of.

At Saturday’s Class 4 Northwestern District meet on the same Third Battle of Winchester course, everyone could see just how large of an impact one of the district’s shortest runners makes.

The 4-foot-11 Konyar placed second overall in a personal-record time of 18 minutes and 43.9 seconds to lead a dominant team performance by the Colonels.

James Wood had six runners place in the top 13 and scored 36 points to beat runner-up Sherando by 22 and repeat as district champions. The other six runners in the Colonels’ top seven each improved on their times from Third Battle, and their average time improvement was 47 seconds.

Lofton expected his runners to do better at the district meet, because that was the goal. But having a strong No. 1 makes a difference for any team.

“Having Kate as a really fast No. 1 helps a bunch, but the rest of the girls have a great pack,” Lofton said.

Defending champion Cassidy Scott, a Fauquier junior, blew away the field on Saturday with a time of 18:11.5, but Lofton was pleased with how Konyar did.

“We talked about race strategy and just kind of going for it, and she did,” Lofton said. “I’m very proud of the way Kate ran today. Fantastic.”

The Konyar family is no stranger to freshman success. In the last year of the Virginia High School League’s conference era, Kate’s older sister Kenzie won the Conference 21 West championship in 2016 to open the postseason.

Still, Kenzie — who is now a junior runner at George Washington University — never broke 19 minutes as a freshman like Kate did on Saturday. Kate’s best time this season before Saturday was a 19:14, which she ran at the Oatlands Invitational on Sept. 24.

“I feel [this season] has gone very well,” Konyar said. “I’ve been at the top as a freshman, and that’s pretty cool. I’m doing a lot better than I expected.”

Konyar said she got past her illness pretty quickly after missing the Third Battle Invitational, so she felt she could run well on Saturday. While she couldn’t keep up with Scott, who began to pull away after a mile, she separated herself well from the rest of the field. Sherando senior Emma Ahrens placed third in 18:58.9 to record her own PR.

“I was going to try and stick with [Scott], but she’s crazy,” said Konyar with a laugh. “I tried my best.”

Sherando

Sherando earned its fourth straight Region 4C meet berth on Saturday. The region meet will take place on Nov. 2 at Morven Park in Leesburg.

The Warriors are the only Winchester-Frederick County girls’ team to qualify for regionals each of the past four years.

“It’s really exciting,” Ahrens said. “We’re all looking forward to going to regionals and having another race to continue.”

Of the eight Sherando girls who competed Saturday and at the previous weekend’s Third Battle Invitational, all but one improved on their time from last week.

“Coming in, we knew we were seeded second, and the plan was to just go after it,” Warriors coach Megan Roberts said. “We didn’t have anything to lose. We were chasing after James Wood, and we just had to give it our all. I think we did that.

“We had some huge PRs today. The girls didn’t crack under the pressure. They said, ‘We’ve got a shot, and we’re going to go after it.’ They all had great races in pursuit of that.”

Ahrens thought she was capable of running faster than she did at the Third Battle meet, where it was difficult to navigate traffic on the course. There was a huge gap between the top four runners and the rest of the field on Saturday, with fourth-place finisher Madison Murphy of Millbrook crossing the finish line in 19:13.1, 56 seconds ahead of James Wood’s Quetzali Angel-Perez.

“I felt really relaxed,” said Ahrens, who ran 23 seconds faster than she did at the Third Battle Invitational. “There wasn’t as many people to worry about. I was able to settle into the pace I wanted easily.”

Handley

In placing fourth on Saturday, the Judges are heading to the Region 4C meet for the first time under head coach Mark Stickley. The longtime boys’ coach took over the girls’ program after the departure of Emily Budnyk-Putt, who guided Handley to regionals in 2018 in her final season.

The Judges did not have their No. 2 runner, freshman Ella Warren, because of an injury. But Handley scored 105 points to beat fifth-place Kettle Run by 14 points for the last regional spot.

Freshman Stephanie Truban led the way by taking sixth in 20:14, and the other four scoring runners for Handley placed between 23rd and 32nd.

“I felt confident we could make it,” Stickley said. “Stephanie had a great race, and my next four came through really strong and really tight. That’s what you need.

“They just did a great job. I’m so happy for them. I don’t know if they believed in themselves, that they could get out of districts. We talked about it last week and I said we can make it [to regions] without Ella, which didn’t seem possible three or four weeks ago. But they worked hard and their times have dropped.”

Millbrook

Murphy will be the Pioneers’ only representative at the Region 4C meet. The district champion as a freshman and sophomore and a three-time All-State runner, Murphy’s time of 19:13.1 was just off the 19:12.5 she ran at the Third Battle Invitational.

“We’re still working hard, and she gets to advance to next week,” Millbrook coach Jamie McCarty said. “She’ll have another shot to make it the state meet, and that’s the end goal for us.”

McCarty was pleased by the rest of his girls as well. Saturday marked the first time that Murphy did not run by herself in a race due to the inexperience of her teammates.

“All those girls PR’ed today,” McCarty said. “They learned how to run, they got better every week. I couldn’t be more proud of a group being able to do something like that where everyone had PRs.”

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