Virginians invade the other side of the Potomac!
Handley's Lockhart and James Wood's Novara have

BIG POOL, MD -- Just three Virginia teams traveled across the Potomac to run in the Queen City Striders Cross Country Invitational at Fort Frederick in Maryland, but those three teams and their runners simply destroyed the field that mainly consisted of Maryland teams and runners. Those teams were John Handley, James Wood, and Loudoun Valley.

It was a good day especially for the John Handley boys and girls cross country teams. The boys led by junior Bobby Lockhart's runaway victory in a time of 15:22, were able to place 4 runners in the top 16 for a total of 58 points.

Finishing second in the boys team race was James Wood with 78 points as their front runner was junior Nick Kelchner who placed 5th in a time of 16:42.

Almost completing a 1-2-3 sweep of Virginia teams was the Loudoun Valley boys who finished 4th with 83 points. They were actually tied for 3rd with Westminister, but a sixth man tiebreaker dropped them back to 4th. They were led by Jon Tew's excellent individual performance of finishing 4th at a clocking of 16:37.

The John Handley girls won by even a wider margin of 32 points for the girls team title. They were able to perform a tremendous feat of putting 6 girls in the top 15. Leading the way for the Lady Judges was sophomore Jaime Lockhart's 2nd place finishing time of 20:22. In case you are wondering or didn't know, Jaime is in fact Bobby's brother. The running gene pool in the Lockhart family has to be obviously very strong.

Ms. Lockhart however finished second to another Virginia runner, James Wood freshmen phenom Kristin Novara. Novara ran a strong race to finish in a time of 20:08. She helped her team to a fourth place finish with 112 points.

The Loudoun Valley girls performed well also, taking runner up honors with 69 points. Junior Joanna Long and senior Jessica Mehl helped the Loudoun Valley girl cause with their 4th and 6th placing times respectively of 20:41 and 20:56.