ST. LOUIS – Sandwiched around a second-place finish by Owasso’s (OK) Haley Geisler, two Missouri freshmen girls battled for the Forest Park XC Festival White Division crown.
It could be a cross country rivalry in the making as Washington’s Mikayla Reed and Lutheran South’s Riley Schelp clashed for the first time as freshmen foes.
Schelp held the early lead, but she could not keep up the pace over the last mile and slipped back to finish in third (20:00.6). She said it’s cool to think about racing against Reed for the next four years.
“That’s hopefully something to look forward to,” Schelp said. “She’s really good. Just like looking at Hannah Long and Taylor Werner, they’re neck-and-neck with each other. That’s amazing to have someone there to push you.”
Reed took over on a short downhill with less than a mile to the finish and won the race in 19:25.4.
Reed just started running last spring when she tried track for the first time, and she said prior to that she had little experience with any sports.
“I started in March in track season, and one of the coaches said I should run distance. I was quite unathletic in elementary school,” said Reed, who tallied more than 300 miles of training this summer. “My legs don’t feel as bad as I thought they would, and it’s my first time running without my knee braces, and so I was scared to do that. My knees didn’t hurt at all.”
Schelp has a little more experience as a distance runner. She ran for the Blazers track club and was on the middle school cross country team. Now that the races have gotten longer, she said she has to start gaining endurance to carry her past the miler mentality.
“I need to work on building up endurance the last two kilometers,” Schelp said. “I took off the first 3k, and then I didn’t have that much left.”
The boys White Division race was a three-man contest heading into the final mile. As they made the turn to the finish line, Westminster junior Andrew Murray found his kick and pulled away for the victory in 16:47.1.
Murray moved to St. Louis from Maryland over the summer and is still adjusting to the new surroundings.
“I guess I’ve improved since last year; I was more toward the middle of the pack last year, and now I’m toward the front,” said Murray, who also won the 3k Webster Groves Warm-Up a week ago. “It’s different. There’s no expectations, but I don’t know who’s around me, and I need to learn more about the people I’m around.”
Close behind was Pembroke Hill’s Evan Peterson (16:50.3), and Poplar Bluff junior Isaiah Williams took third (16:54.2).
Williams had led early in the race, but he couldn’t maintain his pace in the final strides and gave way to Murray.
“I ran a 17:07 here last year and have been getting faster and wanted to break 17 this year, but I didn’t necessarily mean to lead the race. I went down this hill and went down a little faster than I meant to, kind of got up there, and just went with it,” Williams said. “I was pretty tired. I didn’t mean to lead it, and I knew once I was leading it that I was fighting the wind and I wasn’t dropping second place.”
Williams said his initial goal for this season was to dip under 17 minutes. Now that he has accomplished that, he’ll turn his attention to trying to qualify for the state meet for the first time.
Owasso swept the White Division titles, winning the boys’ trophy with 59 points and the girls’ title with 101 points.
Francis Howell North was second in the boys’ race with 148, and Westminster scored 218 for third. The girls’ runner-up was Washington with 118, and Pembroke Hill was third with 170.
The final Festival tally included 125 different high schools in attendance, and there were more than 4,000 runners competing across all divisions.