Virginia Northern Region AAA

Burke Lake all-time lists

by Pearl Watts

Robinson swept the boys and girls team titles with Alan Webb of South 
Lakes and Lake Braddock's Erin Swain claiming the individual crowns at the 
Northern Region Championships at Burke Lake Park yesterday.

For the Robinson boys it was their first regional title since 1990 and 
although they had come in as the pre-meet favorite, they once again had to 
fend off Patriot District rival Lake Braddock as Robinson scored 52 points 
for the win with the runnerup Bruins notching a 66 point total.
Robinson took four of the top thirteen spots and was led by junior L.A. 
Snead who finished third overall on the 2.98 mile course in 15 minutes and 21 
seconds and fellow junior Brian Dumm who was sixth (15:30).
Robinson coach Jeremy Workman said, "Andrew Dunnum was a big help in 
thirteenth but the biggest factor for the team was A.J. Renkiewicz (10th; 
15:38) who had the flu in addition to a bad back and gutted it out once 
again. We needed it because Lake Braddock was on our backs once again."
Second place Lake Braddock received good races once again from the duo of 
Dave Vitto (5th; 15:27) and Jimmy Judge (6th; 15:28) and a big time 
improvement over last week's district race from number four runner Tim Oliver 
but it was not enough to overtake the Rams.

The final two state team qualifying spots were taken by third place 
Jefferson which scored 103 points and were led by senior Dave Silver's second 
place finish in 15:18 and by Oakton which scored 124 points and had their top 
runner, Matt Maline, place fourth overall in 15:25.

Individually, South Lakes junior Alan Webb ran a sparkling time of 14:30 to 
move into fourth place all time among region performers just ahead of Mike 
Mansy of T.C. Williams (14:30.1; 1978) and now trails only Dwight Stephens of 
T.C. Williams (14:29.8; 1979), Jim Hill of Oakton (14:26.4; 1978) and course 
record holder Sharif Karie of West Springfield (14:19; 1996). 
Webb went through the first half mile in 2:20 and hit the mile mark in 
4:44. He was just four seconds off his premeet goal at two miles with his 
split of 9:34 and hit 2.5 miles in 12:11 enroute to the fastest time other 
than Karie in twenty years. South Lakes coach Scott Raczko said, "it was a 
good race for Alan considering that he pretty much trained through this race 
and did not back off much on his workouts in the past week."

The Robinson boys title may not have been a surprise but the girls victory 
came as one. The Rams scored 104 points to just edge runnerup Chantilly's 107 
point total with defending champion Lake Braddock third with 116 and Oakton 
nabbing the fourth spot with 147.

Robinson coach Jeremy Workman said, "this was exciting, the goal was for 
the girls to run well enough at the region meet to get to states."
The Robinson girls, who had run their best meet of the season last week at 
districts, greatly improved on that best this week and although they did not 
have any runner finish in the top ten, grabbed three of the next four spots 
with freshmen Sam Ference and Lauren Hovland and junior Amy Wagner to key the 
victory.
Chantilly also ran well with Carin Miller in sixth (18:13) and Laurie 
Yarger in tenth (18:28) as the top fifteen individual finishers all improved 
on their district times.