Roman repeats at soggy CHA runfest

by TOM UTESCHER

The last gallons of “Ivan” had turned the Chestnut Hill Academy campus into a bayou, but that didn’t stop the local school from staging its annual CHA Cross Country Invitational last Saturday.

To say that defending team champion Roman Catholic dominated the event might be understating the case. The Cahillites boasted the top three finishers and placed five more athletes in the top ten, easily outpacing runner-up Haverford School in the team standings, 19 points to 68. In fact Haverford’s total, adjusted downwards according to the displacement scoring procedure, still did not match the figure of 67 produced by Roman’s second five runners.

Senior Mark Burgmann, a first-team All-Catholic pick last season, won the three-mile race in 16 minutes, 38 seconds, well ahead of his classmate Dan Keefe, who snagged second in 17:33.

While Germantown Friends graduated a lot of talent from its 2003 Friends School League champion team, the Tigers still managed a solid third place in Saturday’s meet, ending up with 86 points while Plymouth Whitemarsh was fourth, with 115. Lower Moreland and Philmont Christian were next, with 128 and 150 points respectively, while Cardinal Dougherty edged out host Chestnut Hill for seventh place, 195-196. Ninth and tenth were Church Farm (218) and Friends Select (291), while an 11^th school, Springfield High, entered several runners, but not enough for an official team effort.

After Burgmann won the race without a challenger in sight, the other top finishers arrived closer together. Keefe passed the stopwatch just a second ahead of fellow Roman senior Danny Bezotsky (17:34), and only two seconds later came Eddie Appelbaum, a senior from Lower Moreland.

Fifth-place Seth Gallagher, a Haverford junior, crossed the line in 17:43, and was followed by the other two scorers for Roman, Vincent Mundy (17:44) and Mike Monaghan (17:48), both seniors. Rounding out the top ten were three more Cahillites, Sean Monaghan (17:46), Chris McNichols (17:57), and Steve McKenna (17:58), and the first runner in the 18-minute bracket was Haverford sophomore Rafe Pilling, 11^th in 18:05.

The first Germantown Friends finisher, freshman Max Kaulbach, landed in 12^th place in 18:09, five seconds in front of the top runner from Plymouth Whitemarsh, senior Andrew Levy. Tigers junior Jonas Crim was 14^th overall in 18:20, and also placing in the top 20 for GFS were senior Nat Olin (18^th; 18:28) and freshman Jake McKenzie (20^th; 18:42). The fifth scorer for Germantown was another ninth grader, Isaac Ortiz (32^nd; 19:17).

The Blue Devils of Chestnut Hill Academy were led by senior Steve Pearson, who took the 23^rd spot overall in 18:51. It was the fastest time he had run in competition on a three-mile circuit. The next two host harriers to finish were senior Mike Beautyman 55^th; 20:56 and freshman Ned Cunningham 56^th in 20:58.