Girls cross country places second at districts, moves on to regionals

While it wasn’t the finish they were expecting, Avon’s girls cross country team qualified to next week’s regional meet.

Ranked No. 2 in the state, the Eagles finished No. 2 in the district, as Cuyahoga Valley Christian Academy scored 104 points to 115 for Avon at the Division II district meet Saturday at Lorain County Community College.

“Going into it, we had intentions of winning, but sometimes it doesn’t work that way,” said coach Justin Carroll. “Win or lose, we’re still going to keep moving forward for regionals, and the mentality stays the same to just compete and be our best at regionals and state. Maybe this just wasn’t our day, but that’s just a part of sports and running, and it allows us to go back to the lab and prepare for regionals.”

Generally, the Eagles are led by Ava Melott, who gets them a low number, and then the remaining runners finish in a relatively tight pack. However, this time the pack was further back than usual.

“I don’t really know what happened,” said Melott. “We had a good pack this race. We just have to work on moving it up. Our response to this is that it’s just another race. We still have regionals and hopefully make it to states. I feel like we still have more to do. You live and you learn, and we’re definitely learning from this.”

Melott finished 8th with a time of 19 minutes, 26.7 seconds over the 5,000-meter course. She was followed by Brooke Tindera in 11th with a time of 19:49.0. Avon’s remaining runners were Molly Suter (25th in 20:27.3), Madison Colaizzi (30th in 20:33.5), Lauren Kershaw (41st in 20:40.3), Momoka Tanaka (43rd in 20:43.0) and Molly Pomfrey (44th in 20:44.4).

“This was another opportunity to compete against some good teams,” Carroll said. “I still think our pack did well, starting together and moving up. You just have to tip your hat to CVCA. In the end, whether you’re first or eighth or whatever, the goal is to be in the top 13 and make it to the next stop, which is the regional championship.”

The regional meet will be October 31 at Boardman High School. Avon’s boys will be competing in the Division I race at Boardman. There was no district competition for the Division I teams, all of whom moved directly into the regional meet.