photo by: Kim North

Wheeling Central’s Michael Hutnick crosses the finish line during Saturday’s Buckeye 8 and OVCCL Championship races at Buckeye Local High School in Connorville. He placed eighth in the OVCCL portion of the event.

CONNORVILLE – It’s not very often that a high school cross country program brings home four team championships from one day’s performance. It happened Saturday morning.

Despite a chill in the air and cloud cover for the most part, Bellaire kept its red-hot seasons going by sweeping both the boys’ and girls’ races during the Buckeye 8 and OVCCL Championship Meets, which were run simultaneously, on the revised 3.1-mile course around the campus at Buckeye Local High School.

They accumulated 64 points to second-place St. Clairsville’s 73 in the Buckeye 8 race and tallied 77 to top the Red Devils by 10 in the OVCCL race.

Martins Ferry (84/101) was third in both races, followed by Beaver Local (88) and East Liverpool (124) in the Buckeye 8 top 5 and Beaver Local (109) and Edison(128) in the OVCCL portion.

“We’ve been running really well and instilling the history and tradition in our program and the kids have definitely bought into it,” Bellaire head coach Chris Armo said. “However, the next three weeks will be really big for us.”

Arno was referring to the Ohio sectionals which will be held at Cambridge High School on Saturday.

“We’ve had some very good seasons over the years and we’ve had some teams make it to the state meet and win some OVAC championships,” he added. “We’re looking forward to the next couple of weeks.”

Arno noted that each team will graduate just one senior.

“We’re really young on both sides,” he said. “Consistentcy has been the key. We’ve talked about that from Day 1. We traditionally get faster throughout the season. We preach about being a family and that was evident Saturday as a lot of former runners and their parents came out to support us.”

BOYS

Buckeye 8

The Big Reds had all five of their scoring runners place in the top 21, with junior Landen Perdue leading the way with a third-place finish in 15-minutes, 57.65-seconds. Classmate Kai Jon Cerritos joined Perdue in the top 10, finishing ninth in 17:10.50. Senior Kai Brehm (12th, 17:29.63), Freshman Keyser Taylor (19th, 18:13.11) and junior Brae Schmidli (21st, 18:15.26. Rounded out the scorers.

This was the first league championship for Bellaire.

The Potters’ Maddox Roach crossed the finish line first in 15:40.25. Union Local’s Connor Bendo was second in 15:48.93.

OVCCL

Bellaire’s runners finished 3rd, 10th, 14th, 24th and 26th in the OVCCL race, with Perdue once again setting the pace.

Linsly Jakob Schmidt-Weigand was fourth in 16:09.64, with Wheeling Central’s Michael Hutnick coming in eighth with a time of 16:49.24

GIRLS

Bellaire posted a 21-point victory (33-54) over second-place Martins Ferry in the Buckeye 8 race as four of its five scoring runners placed in the top 10, led by freshman Kamdin Snider and junior Kayla Edgar who finished second and third, respectively, in 19:07.37 and 20:03.99.

Adding to the Big Reds victory were junior Liz Mayer (7th, 21:30.47), freshman Lyla Blazek (8th, 21:35.34) and sophomore Lexi Fry (13th, 22:15.54).

OVCCL

Bellaire ran 2nd, 4th, 16th, 18th and 25th in the OVCCL race to total 65 points, which was 17 better than second-place Shadyside. Edison (104) and Linsly (118) were third and fourth, respectively, with Martins Ferry (118) rounding out the top 5.

Martins Ferry senior Allana Williams continued to dominate in her first season of running cross country. The two-time all-Ohioan last spring clocked out in 18:48.39, nearly 20 seconds ahead of Snider, to take the gold in both races.