Alivia Cleveland, Fort Mill girls’ cross-country team celebrate 5A state championships
The weather wasn’t perfect at the SCHSL 5A girls’ cross-country state meet.
Rain and a temperature in the 40s at the Newberry College cross-country course on Nov. 10 caused the ground to be very slick in certain areas.
But that didn’t stop Fort Mill from putting on an excellent performance.
“We just race our race,” Yellow Jackets coach Lee Whitaker said. “The only thing that I tell them is that they can only control so much. We can’t control the weather, and every single person out there has got to run on the same course in the same weather in the same temperature. There’s really no advantage or disadvantage to it.”
Fort Mill won the state meet that day with 68 points, eight points ahead of runner-up Lexington.
Sophomore Alivia Cleveland was the meet’s individual winner with a time of 18 minutes, 17.2 seconds, more than fifteen seconds ahead of the second-place finisher.
Cleveland said that the weather was unexpected but didn’t really alter how she typically runs her races.
“I definitely was not expecting it to be rainy and as muddy,” Cleveland said. “Technically, I was the first person to run on parts, but it was still definitely slippery, and I had to slow down on some parts. When I was taking turns, I almost fell out at one part, so I had to definitely slow it down a little bit. But overall, I don’t think it affected me too much.”
Fort Mill benefited from having four total runners finish in the top 20 at the meet.
After Cleveland, freshman Kaylee Rovenstine finished fifth (19:00.57), freshman Mia Zook finished 14th (19:31.59) and sophomore Avery Moriarty finished 17th (19:41.70).
“Going in, I feel like part of what helped our team was knowing that we were really going to have to work hard if we wanted to win,” Rovenstine said. “We were going in placed at second, so I feel like that helped our team to really push it at the parts that we needed to push it, and it just worked out in our favor.”
Fort Mill’s state championship comes after some rather close finishes in the past.
The team was second at last year’s 5A state meet and third in 2021.
Whitaker said that this season carried some extra motivation thanks to close calls in the previous two years.
“Ever since we started this process a few years ago, the whole team has really been motivated to get better, to improve, to do what they needed to do to win,” he said. “And really over the last year or two. The team has been very willing to show up early for morning practices. They’ve been in the weight room all year, and they’ve done every single thing possible just to continue to get better. For this to culminate into a state championship is just icing on the cake for this team.”
Fort Mill’s boys’ cross-country team finished second for the second straight year with 76 points, trailing Dorman by 14.
Senior Tanner Long had the highest finish for the Yellow Jackets, finishing fifth in 16:05.89.