There were no brooms to be seen, but they could have come in handy as host Bay nearly pulled off a clean sweep at the Bay Rockets Invitational cross-country meet.
In near-perfect conditions, Bay seniors Michael Hanselman and Erin Belveal won their respective individual races at Cahoon Park on August 24, and the Bay boys also won the team race. Only a Magnificat win in the girls’ team race prevented a clear victory for the Rockets.
The real news of the day, however, was the fact that the Bay Boys swept everyone else in the boys race, finishing 1-2-3-4-5 for a perfect team score of 15. St. Ignatius finished second with 56 points, followed by Amherst with 71.
“It was pretty incredible,” Bay coach Jack Hautz said. “No team has ever done that before, scoring 15 points. It was on our home track and we won’t be running here again anytime soon. It was really a special moment for our seniors and really for everyone who competed in that race.”
With six of the seven runners who helped the Rockets finish fourth at last year’s Division II meet returning, it’s no surprise to see the team enjoying success so early, but having the top five runners in a seven-team, 61-runner field is rare indeed.
“That doesn’t happen very often,” Hanselman said. “It shows how much depth our team has.”
Bay went flat out from the start and took the top five early on. Hanselman and Connor Spellman were side by side at the front, followed by Kieran Ripley, Spencer Grace and Sacha Jones. By the two-mile mark, Jones had dropped to seventh place, but he put in a strong final sprint on the final straight and worked his way back up to fifth place to complete the win.
“This is one of those races where you wish you could put it in a bottle and save it for later,” Hautz said. “But our guys are obviously not at their peak yet. They still have a lot of work to do. We still have a big gap to close.”
Notably, Hanselman said he didn’t feel good at all during the race, but he shared the lead with Spellman with times of 4:54 at the mile mark and 10:05 at two miles. Hanselman pulled away to win in 16:01.5, followed by Spellman (16:07.9), Ripley (16:33.1), Grace (16:45.3) and Jones (17:00.3).
Before the race, Bay and St. Ignatius were expected to be a good battle, but the Wildcats held off top runner Maxwell Friedrich, who finished third in the 3200m at the state track and field championships last spring, and the man in second place, Peter Spellacy, dropped out of the race because of illness.
But on this day, it might not have mattered if they had run. The Rockets were that good.
“We didn’t expect to give it our all,” Spellman said. “We knew Ignatius would be good and that we would have to work hard. We went into the competition with that mindset. All five guys stepped up and did what they were supposed to do.”
Belveal employed a strategy that was the exact opposite of that of the Bay Boys. She was in seventh place at the mile mark before moving into second place at two miles. She finally passed former leader Aubrey Prada of Olmsted Falls with about 600 yards to go. Unfortunately, Prada took a wrong turn late in the race and by the time she got back on the track, her lead of about 100 feet had vanished. It’s unclear if the misstep cost Prada the race, as Belveal was closing in quickly.
“I think I could have won, or at least come close,” Belveal said. “My strategy is to hold back, start a little conservatively and keep the same pace throughout the race.”
Magnificat won a close girls race with 38 points, followed by Olmsted Falls with 41. Bay took third place with 49 points.
