Raiders boys in title hunt as Plum, Riverview get set for WPIAL cross country meet

By: Michael Love
Saturday, October 19, 2024 | 11:01 AM

The Plum and Riverview cross country teams are set for the WPIAL championships scheduled for Thursday, Oct. 24 at White Oak Park, and titles and medals, both for teams and individuals, are there for the taking.

The Raiders, in Class A, will run the first races – boys at 11 a.m. and girls at 11:30 – while Plum runners will be featured in the final races of the day at 3 and 3:45 p.m.

The top four Class A girls teams and the top three Class A boys teams qualify for the PIAA championships Nov. 2 in Hershey. The top three Class 3A boys and girls teams also will qualify.

The top individual finishers not on one of the qualifying teams — 20 for Class A girls, 15 for Class A boys and 15 for both Class 3A boys and girls — also will punch tickets to the state meet.

Riverview in title hunt

The boys and girls teams have built up considerable momentum over the past several weeks, and coach Palma Ostrowski is excited to see how the teams will fare on the WPIAL’s grandest stage.

The Raiders boys are the defending Class A champions, but Ostrowski said it will be a challenge to repeat as perennial power Winchester Thurston, which captured the PIAA Foundation Invitational Class A race by 64 points, enters the WPIAL meet ranked No. 1 in the state.

“Thinking about Winchester Thurston, it’s like looking in the mirror,” Ostrowski said. “We both have three medal-winning seniors at the front followed by two of the top sophomores and two of the top freshmen in the WPIAL. Both have strong, experienced sixth men.

“From a team perspective, we’ve gotten the best of Winchester over their first three years with two WPIAL championships, two PIAA top threes and a 7-4 record head-to-head, all of which, I am sure, will make them incredibly hungry to beat us as they have their best team since their 2019 state championship. We are excited, but at the same time, we realize it is a huge task to beat them in either of the big postseason meets.”

The Riverview boys captured a dual-class section championship this year, going 9-0 and defeating defending Class 2A state champ Hampton as well as Class 2A powers Freeport and North Catholic.

“We were fortunate in that one of our key injuries, senior Holden Deasy, got healthy in time for the meet with Hampton and Freeport while Hampton had a significant injury to their No. 2. Nonetheless, the boys prepared for and ran really well in that huge meet.”

Deasy will be joined by fellow seniors Chris Barnes and Micah Ivy, sophomore Ashton Saunders and freshman Oscar Smith at the core of Riverview’s WPIAL team at White Oak.

The Riverview girls, Ostrowski said, will be in contention for a team trip to the PIAA championships.

She said two teams — Winchester Thurston and Our Lady of the Sacred Heart — have separated themselves, and the Carlynton/Bishop Canevin co-op team is a strong third.

Riverview, she added, is in the mix for the final state-qualifying spot with the likes of Shady Side Academy and Eden Christian.

The Riverview girls, led by senior Lily Bauer, sophomore Hannah Hudak, junior Rosa Lascola and freshman Kirsten Laversa, finished their section schedule 6-3 behind WPIAL Class 2A powers North Catholic and Hampton as well as Shady Side.

“We weren’t very competitive with North Catholic and Hampton, but we lost a close meet to Shady Side where both teams were missing some key runners.”

With her 19:56 time at the PIAA Foundation Invite, Bauer became the third Riverview girls runner in program history to break 20 minutes in a 5K race.

Plum runners target states

Plum coach Brett Kennedy said the top runners on both teams — junior Mayah Torres and sophomore Brady Sciullo — can put up a challenge for an individual trip to states if they run their best races at WPIALs.

“They’ve been working really hard and training well,” he said. “I know that’s their goal, and we’ve been doing everything we can to try to support them and make it happen.”

Overall, Kennedy hopes to see results Thursday that reflect individual improvement from throughout the season.

“The boys were 14th at WPIALs last year and our top two runners were seniors, so it will be tough to top last year’s performance,” he said. “But our younger runners have been doing really well, so we’re not going to shy away from that challenge.”

The girls placed 24th at the 2023 WPIAL championships.

Kennedy said he hoped to see good things Oct. 17 at the Tri-State Coaches meet at White Oak Park. The meet each year is viewed by many teams as a tuneup and measuring stick for the WPIAL meet on the same course.

“It’s good to get out there (for Tri-States) on the same course as WPIALs with the same teams we’ll see again,” Kennedy said.

“We’ve been training a little bit harder this week (leading up to Tri-States) to make the legs a little bit fresher next week.”

WPIALs will mark the third time Plum runners will compete on the White Oak course. The Mustangs also ran there for the Red, White & Blue Invitational early last month.

Kennedy said both teams have experienced minor injury issues throughout the season, but he expects to have both boys and girls lineups full and ready to go at WPIALs.

Kennedy said he was looking forward to some strong intersquad competition in the days leading up to WPIALs to set the top seven for each team.

The Division I, Section 4 championships Oct. 2 at Northmoreland Park, Kennedy said, also was a strong test for both teams in their run up to WPIALs.

Both placed fourth in the team standings.

“We’ve been stressing how important it is to show up and perform well at the championships meets, which are sections and WPIALs,” Kennedy said. “Both teams, in general, did a nice job of competing that day. We were very close to second, especially on the boys side, so we’re getting close to competing against those top teams, mainly Fox Chapel and Kiski.

“Hopefully, both programs can use this year as a stepping stone to crack the top two over the next couple of years. It was a good race on a good course for the kids to test themselves to see where they’re at and what they still needed to work on.”

Michael Love is a TribLive reporter covering sports in the Alle-Kiski Valley and the eastern suburbs of Pittsburgh. A Clearfield native and a graduate of Westminster (Pa.), he joined the Trib in 2002 after spending five years at the Clearfield Progress. He can be reached at mlove@triblive.com.

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