12-5A Boys Cross Country: Patient Graham wins boys crown; EHS tops team standings
Posted On: Saturday, Oct. 31 2009 05:01 AM
By Nick Talbot
Killeen Daily HeraldROUND ROCK – With the pace off to a hectic start at the District 12-5A cross country meet, Copperas Cove's Derwin Graham sat back and waited it out.
Then with a mile left he made his move, pushing ahead of the pack and winning his first district crown with a time of 15 minutes and 52.05 seconds, nearly 20 seconds ahead of Ellison's Sylvester Harrison.
Harrison placed second and helped Ellison win the district title in dominating fashion.
But it was Graham who stole the show with his dominating final mile.
"I knew one of them was going to try to take it over and push the pace, so I just tucked in behind them and let them have it for the first two miles and then … I surged on them," Graham said. "After that I felt strong so I just kicked it in."
Graham finished in fourth place at last year's district meet and said he felt like he had a chip on his shoulder coming into the meet.
"I wanted to come back and win the whole thing," he said. "That was my goal and I finally accomplished it."
Outside of Graham's performance, Ellison, Consolidated and Heights dominated the field. All 15 of the three teams' runners placed in the top-24 positions.
Ellison placed all five of its runners in the top 11, with the Mayo twins (Sam and Max) placing ninth and 10th overall. The team's only senior – the other four runners are sophomores – Luis Hernandez placed third with a time of 16:14.10. His younger brother, Hector Hernandez was 11th.
"That is pretty impressive at a district meet, especially when you have the likes of A&M Consolidated and Belton, who are perennial powerhouses in this district," said Ellison cross country coach Jesse San Miguel.
Consolidated placed second with 59 points, and Harker Heights placed third with 67 points.
"I did not think we were going to go as fast as we did and I got caught behind 10 or 12 guys," Harrison said. "I had to use extra energy to fight through them."
The pace was quick enough that Harrison knocked four seconds off of his personal best time of 16:15.
Leading the way for Consolidated was senior Stephen Case, who finished first overall last season with a time of 16:21.
With the rise of the underclassmen at Cove and Ellison, though, that time was not good enough to win.
Case placed fifth, finishing the course in 16:26.31.
Also finishing ahead of Case was Kyle Thompson of Harker Heights. Tyler Moffit-Matheson, Josh Eckers and Mike Odeh all placed in the top 15 for the Knights.
Both Ellison and Harker Heights will join A&M Consolidated and the top 10 individual finishers at the regional meet at Vandergriff Park in Arlington a week from today.