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Friday, Oct. 30, 2009

Demons ‘sneak’ past field for region win

A veteran Warner Robins boys cross country team shook off a season-long case of what one runner called “senioritis” and won the GHSA Region 1-AAAAA meet Thursday at the Georgia Industrial Children’s Home.

The Demons placed five runners in the top 14 to finish with 42 points and claim their third region title in four years. Houston County finished second, 12 points back. Tift County and individual winner Hunter Honeycutt finished third while Valdosta was fourth.

In the girls meet, Houston County’s Megan Breitbach earned individual honors, beating the field by just less than two minutes. Tift County won the team title, however, with five runners in the top 18. Valdosta, Warner Robins and Houston County rounded out the top four and were separated by just five points.

The top four teams from each region advance to the state meet Nov. 7 in Carrollton. In addition, the top six individuals from each division also earned a berth in the state meet.

The top five boys at Warner Robins are all seniors. Despite success in earlier seasons, several of them felt they had underachieved in this, their final year.

“It was senioritis,” Ryan Dimes said. “A lack of self-motivation.”

As a result, the Demons considered themselves underdogs entering the meet. Head coach David Erpelding encouraged his runners to make a “sneak attack” at region. He himself was quietly confident.

“Every workout was hard this year,” he said. “They had dead legs for most of the season, but I think they peaked at the right time.”

Jacob Grubb, Dimes and Karl Burkhardt finished fourth, fifth and sixth, respectively, in the field of 55. They said those finishes were behind what they earned last year,but added that the team won because of the efforts of Stephen Bassett and Chris Benefield, who finished 13th and 14th, respectively.

“They stepped up to the plate,” Burkhardt said.

Warner Robins won the Houston County championships last week. Several of the runners thought that win provided momentum for Thursday’s effort.

“We had everybody run good at county, and everybody ran really good here,” Benefield said.