OCEAN CITY — Ocean City High School has two individual South Jersey champions and two team champions after Saturday’s Group III sectional cross-country races at Dream Park in Logan Township.
Maeve Smith won the girls race for the Red Raiders and Erik Preisner won the boys race to become the individual title-holders.
They were at the forefront of impressive performances by coach Tim Cook’s girls and coach Matt Purdue’s boys cross-country teams.
Smith won in 18 minutes and 16.69 seconds, just about six seconds ahead of Mainland Regional senior Sofia Day (18:22.47), who finished just ahead of her at the Cape-Atlantic League championship.
Three more Red Raider girls finished in the top five: Chloe Care was third in 18:26.91, Carley Godfrey fourth, 18:37.89; and Riley Tolson fifth, 18:38.91. Zoe Zammit rounded out the scoring for Ocean City, finishing 14th in 19:28.74. Ocean City’s two other runners, Lillian Flora (19:37.85) and Peighton Clemens (20:49.38), were 18th and 34th, respectively, out of the 91 runners in the race.
Ocean City’s girls won the team championship with 27 points, well ahead of second-place Moorestown with 50 and third-place Mainland Regional with 112 points.
In addition to Day, Mustang runners were Cecelia Foreman, 12th, 19:23.90; Ella Mokienko, 25th, 20:14.56; Ava McDole, 29th, 20:28.49; Macie Gannon, 46th, 21:34.87; and Emily Dill, 71st, 23:34.70.
Preisner, who finished in 15:27.94, won the race followed closely by teammates Ethan Buck in second, 15:33.51, and Keenan Newman in third, 15:35.01. Ocean City’s other scorers were Nathan Aschmann, who was 11th in 15:59.06, and Michael Romano, 12th in 16:04.45. Fellow Red Raiders Zach Hutchinson was 14th in 16:08.72 and Kevin Millstein 35th in 17:14.62 out of the 115 runners in the sectional.
As a team, the Ocean City boys won with 29 points, far ahead of second-place Shawnee with 72 and third-place Highland Regional with 97. There were 17 teams in the Group III race.
The boys and girls will be at Holmdel on Saturday for the state group finals.
– By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff