South Pointe sweeps Region 3-3A cross country meet on home course

The South Pointe Stallions turned in dominating performances and claimed both the boys’ and girls’ titles for the second year in a row at the Region 3-3A cross country meet Tuesday afternoon at South Pointe High School.

South Pointe won the girls team title with a team score of 33. Broom was second with 53 points, while Clinton, Lancaster, and Chester completed the field.

Oliva Paxton of South Pointe won the girls’ individual title. She turned in a time of 19:23.40, which was almost two minutes faster than teammate and runner-up Sarah Garner.

Paxton, who has won every dual meet the past two years, won the region title for the second year in a row.

“Winning this back-to-back is very exciting,” said Paxton. “Dominating is even more exciting, but the most awesome thing is that we as a team won for the second year in a row, and we dominated this year as a team.”

Behind Paxton and Garner, the Stallions had Chelsea Smith (8th), Scarlett Black (9th), and Kaitlyn Potter (13th). Only Potter is a senior, and South Pointe had two more underclassmen finish in the top 20.

Lancaster’s top performer was Sydney Cauthen, who finished fourth overall with a time of 22:03.11. Chester was led by Deja Marshall, who was fifth in a time of 22:48.23.

South Pointe was equally as dominant in the boys’ division. The Stallions tallied a team score of 33 points. Broome was second at 67, with Clinton, Lancaster, Chester and Union County completing the field.

Daniel Hurren of Broome was the boys’ individual winner. He ran the 5K course in a time of 16:57.73.

Lancaster’s Alex Quevedo was third overall, and then the Stallions’ dominance took over.

Matthew Mcateer was fourth, and Justin Mcateer was fifth. Daniel Johnson came home sixth, Eric Mitchell, an eighth-grader, was eighth, and Michael Kendree was 10th.

Of the top five South Pointe runners, only two are seniors. Four more Stallions finished in the top 20 and all of them are underclassmen.

South Pointe head coach Jim Koterba was very excited about the performance of both of his teams.

“We did not get to run in the Wendy’s Invitational several weeks back because of the bad weather,” said Koterba. “That threw us off just a bit, but we ran some very good times at the county meet last Saturday.”

That left him very optimistic when he looked at his team’s chances in the region.

“I am very pleased with today,” said Koterba. “You never know what is going to happen, but looking at our times from the county meet, I felt like if we could duplicate that, we would be in pretty good shape.”

The veteran coach was very happy with the performance turned in by Paxton in the girls’ race.

“She has really been a great leader for us,” said Koterba. “Her work ethic and dedication has rubbed off on the other runners, and they are just like a family.”

Koterba was very satisfied with the way the South Pointe boys ran so close together during the entire race.

“That was the key for us today,” said Koterba. “When they run at practice, they run bunched up. They run a lot on their own outside of practice, and they run times that are very close together.”

This story was originally published October 20, 2015 at 10:50 PM with the headline "South Pointe sweeps Region 3-3A cross country meet on home course."