Princeton girls take Carolina 1-A cross country meet

By Ryan Hanchett
Published in Sports on October 11, 2012 1:48 PM

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SEVEN SPRINGS -- The Princeton girls' cross country team has slowly been catching up to Rosewood over the course of the Carolina 1-A Conference season.

The Bulldogs finally passed the Eagles at Cliffs of the Neuse State Park on Wednesday afternoon. Princeton grabbed first with 32 team points, three points better than Rosewood. Goldsboro finished third with 66 points.

Abby Rubio crossed the finish line first overall in 23 minutes, 58 seconds to lead Princeton. Teammate Althea Belagio (24:24) finished second, while Amber Johnson (25:07) ended up fifth for the Bulldogs.

"I am a little surprised with how the results shook out today," Princeton head coach Mark McLamb said. "At the beginning of the season Rosewood was beating us by 20 points, then it was 10 and then five. Today we finally got ahead."

Charleigh Smith led Rosewood with a fourth-place finish in 24:55. Ashley Duran (26:12) finished sixth and Kasey Elliot (26:31) finished eighth.

Grayson Collins paced Goldsboro with a third-place finish in 24:45.

Samantha Wilkins led the North Duplin runners with a seventh-place finish in 26:20.

On the boys' side, Midway dominated the race. The non-conference invitee tallied 26 points and claimed the top two individual spots. Michael McLamb crossed the line first 18:26 with teammate Caleb Sanders coming in 10 seconds behind him.

Rosewood finished second in the team standings with 69 points. Spring Creek finished third with 75 points, Goldsboro compiled 108 points, North Duplin tallied 130 and Princeton earned 145 points.

Dylan Cuddington paced Rosewood with an eighth-place finish in 19:39. Dalton Farmer finished in ninth 25 seconds behind Cuddington.

Allen Coor led Spring Creek with a third-place run in 18:38. Gage Abbott (19:18) finished fifth and Justin Gianfarra (20:18) ran 11th.

Victor Prezbindowski emerged Goldsboro's top runner with a fourth-place finish in 18:54. Matt Edwards led Princeton in 13th place with a time of 20:17.

"We were missing our top three runners because they also play soccer and there is a soccer game tonight," McLamb said. "The good thing is that the regular-season meets don't really count for anything. We need to be at our best for the conference championship meet and the regional meet."

The Carolina 1-A Conference championship meet is Oct. 17 at the Cliffs.