×

McDonald boys, Howland girls win

LORDSTOWN — Area distance athletes gathered at Lordstown High School Tuesday afternoon for the 2019 Trumbull County Cross Country Championships.

The 5K run comes to a finish at Lordstown’s new sports complex — Veteran’s Memorial Stadium.

Sixteen schools competed, but three stood out. McDonald, Howland and Maplewood placed first, second, and third for the boys, respectively.

While the same three culprits found themselves on top of the podium for the girls with Howland switching spots with McDonald and taking home first place.

“We’ve had a great season thus far,” Howland girls coach Robin Kapalko said. “We’ve had some big wins. We’ve won three invitationals. We had a nice showing at the Boardman Invitational last weekend. We came into Trumbull County confident. They ran really well. They scored 27 points. That’s pretty darn good. Our freshman, Megan Hipple, led the way. She’s very gutsy. She’s not afraid to take a chance and it paid off for her today. She finished second in the county at 19:26. We focus on one meet at a time, and staying healthy. Hopefully, that pays off in the end.”

Howland made the jump from Division II to I this year.

“We’re with the big dogs now,” Kapalko said.

In all, the Tigers had five of the top 10 finishers with Maria Dellimuti placing fourth, Gabby Reuschling fifth, Molly Yasnowski sixth and Elenie McNally 10th.

Other top-10 finishers were McDonald’s Anna Guerra (third) and Sela Jones (eighth), Maplewood’s Marissa Ventura (seventh) and Lakeview’s Sydney Dobler (ninth).

Badger senior Miranda Stanhope won Tuesday’s event with a time of 19:22.

After the race Stanhope, the defending Division III girls state champion, did her usual 2-mile cool down.

” I actually did a harder 1-mile work out,” Stanhope said. “Then, I finished with a 2-mile cool down. It gets your muscles relaxed after the race. If not, you’ll get tight and it’ll be harder to recover. I’m trying to reclaim the title at state. My coach, Carrie Albert, has helped me out a lot. She’s done a great job with the younger kids too. I’ve never run here. So, it was a little different. I tried to stay with the pack for most of the race. Then, the last mile I was trying to get a gap on some of the girls.”

Badger’s boys had two top-10 finishers with Lincon Hopkins second and Jacob Zahoransky 10th. Mineral Ridge’s Timmy Pappagallo was ninth. Niles McKinley had Micah Curry fourth and Nathan Lanham seventh. Howland’s Lane Goble and Zachary Brill were third and sixth, respectively.

And, the boys team champions, McDonald had Connor Symbolik eighth, Ethan Domitrovich fifth, and the individual winner, Brody Rupe, with a time of 16:57.

“I’ve always loved the Trumbull County meet,” Rupe said. “It was great to have it at Lordstown this year. It was probably my favorite race so far this year because of the competition. It was great to win. We’re really on a roll with winning. We’ve beaten some really good teams the last couple of weeks. Ethan Domitrovich is coming back from a stress fracture in his leg. It’s great to see him healthy.”

Rupe’s dad, Chris Rupe, is the coach of McDonald’s boys team and a Maplewood graduate.

“We’ve won some of the biggest meets the last couple of weeks,” Chris Rupe said. “Winning those types of meets is really exciting. We came into today hoping we could win the team championship, and hoping we could have an individual winner. Coming in, Maplewood had won 21 team and individual championships over the years. We had 19. We knew that if we won both parts today that we tied them. We’re actually tied on the junior high side as well with 19 apiece.

“It’s fun to follow the success of both programs.”

NEWSLETTER

Today's breaking news and more in your inbox

I'm interested in (please check all that apply)
Are you a paying subscriber to the newspaper? *
     

COMMENTS

[vivafbcomment]

Starting at $4.85/week.

Subscribe Today