2026 Maryland XC Invitational

Thank you to all of the parents (and athletes) who have already uploaded photos to our Google Drive folder. If you took photos but haven't uploaded them yet, please use this link to do so. There was also an official meet photographer and when those photos are available I will add them to this folder sorted by athlete.

Aside from our postseason schedule, this is the only meet that has become an every-year staple for our program. We first attended MDXC in its second year, back during our 2022 championship season. We placed 7th out of 22 teams that day, by far our best performance through our first four trips to Shawan Downs.

This is a great course to PR on and it's spread out in a way few meets have the land for. Thanks to some great weather this week, the course was in great condition -- nearly as dry and fast as last year's edition.

This was as competitive as MDXC has been. We saw roughly 100 more finishers in both races we participated in compared to last October. We had a lot of great performances, so I won't waste any more time in the intro as I'll have plenty to say in the two race sections and my final thoughts.

For our results below, I have marked in blue all athletes who set a new PR (personal record) in the cross country 5k at the meet. Additionally, in red, I have noted all athletes who set a new SB (season best), but not PR, in the cross country 5k. For returning athletes who ran faster today than they did on this course in any of the past three seasons, in silver I have noted all athletes who set a new PCB (personal course best) for the Shawan Downs 5k course.

Varsity

Here are the results for our varsity athletes (440 total finishers in the race). The number in front of each name signifies their overall place in the Black & Gold varsity race. In brackets are their first mile, second mile, third mile, and last 0.1 mile splits:

38 Kenneth Osuji Jr. (Jr) - 16:23.82 [(1) 5:05, (2) 5:16, (3) 5:33, (3.1) 0:30] PR by 1 minute 33 seconds
64 Arvin Mirchandani (Sr) - 16:45.63 [(1) 5:07, (2) 5:27, (3) 5:41, (3.1) 0:31] PR by 2 seconds PCB by 1 minute 9 seconds
105 Elijah Hawkins (Sr) - 17:09.36 [(1) 5:18, (2) 5:36, (3) 5:48, (3.1) 0:27] PR by 1 minute 7 seconds PCB by 1 minute 18 seconds
111 Kendall Giles (Sr) - 17:14.11 [(1) 5:27, (2) 5:35, (3) 5:39, (3.1) 0:33] PR by 53 seconds
127 Lucas Moisiuk (Jr) - 17:19.89 [(1) 5:18, (2) 5:33, (3) 5:54, (3.1) 0:35] PR by 31 seconds PCB by 36 seconds
280 Dominic Hilton (Jr) - 18:28.21 [(1) 5:44, (2) 5:58, (3) 6:13, (3.1) 0:33] SB by 57 seconds
295 Alexander Soto (Jr) - 18:37.02 [(1) 5:48, (2) 6:05, (3) 6:16, (3.1) 0:28] PR by 34 seconds PCB by 1 minute 32 seconds
296 Renaud Williams (Sr) - 18:37.20 [(1) 5:45, (2) 6:04, (3) 6:20, (3.1) 0:28] PR by 49 seconds PCB by 1 minute 32 seconds
312 Satchel Drabinski (So) - 18:47.44 [(1) 5:44, (2) 6:05, (3) 6:24, (3.1) 0:34] PR by 30 seconds PCB by 1 minute 57 seconds
340 Evan Bouchard (Fr) - 19:08.40 [(1) 5:58, (2) 6:13, (3) 6:28, (3.1) 0:29] PR by 8 seconds

What a day for our varsity runners! It's been a long time since we've seen this much blue in this section of the writeup. In fact, I'm not sure when the last time was that every member of our varsity team either set a new PR or season best in the same race -- and we did it with 10 in the race today!

Last year our first finisher, Luke Moisiuk, placed 131st out of 325 finishers (59th percentile in the race). This year, Luke was our fifth finisher in 127th place in a deeper field (71st percentile). It's a huge improvement both for him individually and for our team as a whole.

Kenneth ran a heck of a race! Coming back from a foot injury that prevented him from racing two weeks ago, he had a good week of training but still wasn't 100% through the week. You wouldn't know it from the way he raced today, taking more than 90 seconds off his previous PR from his varsity debut at Skip Grant three weeks ago. This is the third fastest 5k time for any DeMatha junior dating back to 2000.

Arvin got back until 17 minutes for the first time since last season and did so by a comfortable margin. Elijah and Kendall each broke 18 minutes for the first time, and did so decisively, putting themselves in range of breaking 17!

I'm really happy for Alex and Satchel. They both had run sub-19:20 but have spent the last few weeks in the 20s. Running their first sub-19s is a great confidence booster. Likewise, Renaud had been stuck right around 19:30 for the past few races and made a huge jump.

Evan has had a really strong freshman season, but his last couple of races had been trending in the wrong direction time-wise due to various health/injury issues. It was great to see him run so well today and he's got a great shot in our postseason to join a really strong group of Stags to break 19 minutes as freshmen over the past decade.

Dominic didn't quite set a new PCB, but he only missed it by about 4 seconds and he's now well within range of his PR from last year's Private School State Championship with three and a half weeks to make up those 13 seconds.

Team Results

1. Centennial 155 points
2. Calvert Hall 206 points
3. Crofton 217 points
4. Dulaney 244 points
5. St Albans 260 points
6. Georgetown Prep 275 points
7. C. Milton Wright 327 points
8. Reservoir 328 points
9. Broadneck 346 points
10. Winston Churchill 356 points
...
13. DeMatha 436 points
14. Eleanor Roosevelt 449 points
...
17. Good Counsel 483 points
...
50. Northern 1606 points

Calvert Hall was going for the 3-peat and Centennial was able to shut that down, moving up from last year's 2nd place team finish. Congrats to them.

This was the most competitive field we've seen in five years of racing in the seeded Black & Gold varsity race. We narrowly beat our county 'rival' who we frequently encounter at Greenbelt Lake, which is exciting. More importantly, we beat the only WCAC opponent in our race.

We had a 56-second spread from our first to fifth runner; that was the 6th best in the race.

Junior Varsity

Here are the results for our junior varsity athletes (618 total finishers in the race). The number in front of each name signifies their overall place in the JV boys race. In brackets are their first mile, second mile, third mile, and last 0.1 mile splits:

118 Blake Inzeo (So) - 19:24.81 [(1) 5:29, (2) 6:36, (3) 6:50, (3.1) 0:30] PR by 1 minute 2 seconds
219 Michael Bridges (So) - 20:14.33 [(1) 6:07, (2) 6:32, (3) 6:57, (3.1) 0:38] PR by 57 seconds PCB by 1 minute 49 seconds
237 John Tomas Felicio (Jr) - 20:21.45 [(1) 6:13, (2) 6:38, (3) 6:57, (3.1) 0:33] PR by 2 minutes 18 seconds PCB by 3 minutes 21 seconds
247 Dominic Hislop (So) - 20:25.18 [(1) 6:12, (2) 6:37, (3) 7:00, (3.1) 0:36] PR by 1 minute 24 seconds
257 Dane Kuzner (Jr) - 20:31.14 [(1) 6:09, (2) 6:33, (3) 7:08, (3.1) 0:41] PR by 1 minute 53 seconds PCB by 2 minutes 10 seconds
290 Zahir Accilien (So) - 20:51.45 [(1) 6:19, (2) 6:46, (3) 7:15, (3.1) 0:31] PR by 1 minute 2 seconds
404 Ryan Hickey (So) - 22:07.20 [(1) 6:45, (2) 7:13, (3) 7:30, (3.1) 0:39] PR by 1 minute 34 seconds PCB by 1 minute 47 seconds
410 Stephen Lawrence Jr. (So) - 22:13.95 [(1) 7:05, (2) 7:22, (3) 7:09, (3.1) 0:38] PR by 36 seconds PCB by 1 minute 57 seconds
420 Logan Von Spiegelfeld (Jr) - 22:17.29 [(1) 6:53, (2) 7:13, (3) 7:31, (3.1) 0:40] PR by 55 seconds
422 Nathaniel Garvin Jr. (So) - 22:19.43 [(1) 7:05, (2) 7:23, (3) 7:15, (3.1) 0:36] PR by 36 seconds PCB by 51 seconds
453 Kendall Gratton (Jr) - 22:38.27 [(1) 7:08, (2) 7:25, (3) 7:32, (3.1) 0:33]
485 Nnamdi Onwuka (Fr) - 23:05.13 [(1) 7:02, (2) 7:37, (3) 7:45, (3.1) 0:41] PR by 1 minute 31 seconds
503 Caene Nartey (Fr) - 23:24.61 [(1) 6:42, (2) 7:39, (3) 8:20, (3.1) 0:44] PR by 1 minute 2 seconds
515 Stavros Rodousakis (Jr) - 23:36.70 [(1) 7:08, (2) 7:30, (3) 8:21, (3.1) 0:38] PR by 1 minute 4 seconds PCB by 1 minute 19 seconds
526 Miguel Guzman (So) - 23:47.06 [(1) 7:12, (2) 7:41, (3) 8:11, (3.1) 0:43] PR by 13 minutes 39 seconds
545 Emilio Chicas (Jr) - 24:17.28 [(1) 7:12, (2) 7:52, (3) 8:35, (3.1) 0:38] PR by 1 minute PCB by 1 minute 59 seconds
548 Terence Rascher (Jr) - 24:22.39 [(1) 7:17, (2) 8:08, (3) 8:22, (3.1) 0:35] SB by 1 minute 18 seconds PCB by 24 seconds
550 Julian Righi (Sr) - 24:22.91 [(1) 7:18, (2) 8:02, (3) 8:29, (3.1) 0:34] SB by 1 minute 27 seconds PCB by 7 seconds
570 Sebastian Righi (So) - 24:55.46 [(1) 7:45, (2) 8:01, (3) 8:34, (3.1) 0:35] PR by 1 minute 56 seconds PCB by 3 minutes 44 seconds

~169 Fareed Rahi (So) - 19:52.50 [(1) 6:06, (3) 13:40 [6:50/mi avg], (3.1) 0:33] PR by 18 seconds PCB by 48 seconds

"It took me a while to get through all the PRs, season bests, and personal course bests for this lot. They did such a fantastic job today," I began this section last year. Don't fix what ain't broke!

The only athlete who didn't set a new PR or season best today was Kendall Gratton, but that's only because he set his first PR today in his season debut. The time was solid, but what really impresses me is how steady his splits were. That was really impressive for his first 5k.

Blake went out super aggressive today. He was in 16th place at the 1-mile mark! Unfortunately, that level of aggressiveness cost him quite a bit as he ceded more than 100 places over the remainder of the race, but he did nice job to hold form and manage his losses. He had the 232nd fastest second mile split in the race but the 207th fastest third mile split, so it didn't let the rough second mile snowball too badly. And let's not let it get lost than he ran his first career sub-20 5k and did so decisively!

I'd be up all night writing if I took the time to write about every single one of these guys, though they all deserve their kudos. But I have to focus on just a few performances that really stood out to me.

When I saw JT come through the mile mark right on Dominic's heels, I was surprised and really pleased with how relaxed he looked. When he was still right with him when I saw him for the third time just after the 2-mile mark, I knew the result was going to be special. I never expected him to just skip right over the 21s, but he did just that. This was one of the most remarkable one-week, late-season improvements I've seen from a returning runner in my coaching career.

Dane and Caene, like Blake, probably went out a little too hard in the first mile and lost a lot of time over the rest of their races. Still, Dane's improvement was pretty similar to JT's and Caene still took more than a minute off his PR despite looking like he really wasn't enjoying himself on the course.

Miguel's PR obviously stands out in a big way. He hadn't raced a 5k since our season opening parkrun, but even looking at his only other race this season -- his 2500m run at Braddock Relays -- he's shown remarkable improvement this season. He beat his projected 5k time from Braddock by 4 minutes and 20 seconds, and I've particularly noticed his stride pattern has looked much better over the past week or two at practice. I expected a nice improvement from him today, but I'm blown away by his result.

You'll notice Fareed's name behind everybody else's. He didn't put his bib on his jersey when it was given to him and, rushing to get to the line, he never got around to putting it on. It's a lesson I'm sure he's learned and hopefully his teammates will learn from him, as well. I have emailed the meet director asking if there is any way for them to include him in the results based on camera footage, but without the chip from the bib, I'm not sure whether that's even possible. In any case, fortunately Coach Anthony was at the finish line as a backup and I got his first and third mile splits. I added about 0.9 seconds to Coach Ant's hand time; he was between 0.50 and 0.75 seconds off most of our JV finishers, and so I added a little extra time conservatively so that if an official time comes out later, his time will not get slower. It was Fareed's first sub-20 5k of his career, bringing our total number of athletes to break 20 minutes today to 12!

Team Results

1. Calvert Hall 21 points
2. Centennial 87 points
3. Crofton 123 points
4. Dulaney 149 points
5. St Albans 160 points
...
24. Landon 752 points
25. DeMatha 791 points
...
28. Good Counsel 894 points
...
31. Eleanor Roosevelt 921 points
...
42. North Harford 1237 points

Calvert Hall wasn't going to be denied both 3-peats. This is their third straight year winning the JV race and their victory was only slightly less dominant than last year's.

If Fareed factored into our scoring, we would have taken off around 42 points from our score and leapfrogged Landon for 24th.

Historically Significant Performances*

New additions to DeMatha XC's Top 100 5k leaderboard:

• Kenneth Osuji Jr. -- tied for 16th

• Arvin Mirchandani -- tied for 33rd

• Elijah Hawkins -- tied for 61st

• Kendall Giles -- tied for 70th

• Lucas Moisiuk -- tied for 83rd

Changes to DeMatha XC's Individual Rankings:

• Kenneth Osuji Jr. moves up from 36th to 5th

• Elijah Hawkins enters at 14th

• Kendall Giles enters at 16th

• Lucas Moisiuk moves up from 34th to 20th

*All records since 2000 -- records from prior to 2000 are incomplete. Athletes enter Individual Rankings leadersboard once they have broken 18 minutes in the 5k.

Final Thoughts

This has traditionally been a great PR course for us. The meet is situated late in our season when we have the most training under our belts; with championships approaching, we've just begun reducing our mileage which has our legs feeling fresher; the course is relatively flat and fast, particularly when it is as dry as it was today. We often see PRs by a minute or more on this course, particularly from our less experienced athletes.

Everything above, I drafted on the drive down to the meet. Our athletes exceeded expectations today. I feel confident in saying this was the most successful meet we've had since our championship season in 2022.

Next week's parkrun will be a 'workout' for most of our athletes. Our guys who have several races under their belts, particularly those running varsity and our expected scorers for JV, don't need another all-out 5k effort for the season. We'll want to get their legs moving quickly for a portion of the race to keep them fresh, but this is truly a tune-up for those guys. Athletes with less experience, and those still trying to meet our 30-minute standard to qualify for WCACs, will run it as a traditional 5k race. We'll talk to our athletes as a coaching staff about that more this week.

Monday's run will by OYO for our athletes since there is no school. Please be sure to get it in. We're dialing back the mileage, but we still need to keep our fitness where it is and many of our athletes will be continuing beyond the WCAC Championship for another week and a half, and this week's workouts will benefit that second postseason race.

We also have a 2-mile time trial on Wednesday. That day will be a little weird for us. It is standardized testing day at DeMatha, so we'll get out of school very early. But we need to keep our regular practice time so Coach Ant and Coach Phillips can make it out. I will secure an after school waiting room for our athletes who stick around on campus, but they'll need to have a plan for lunch and they'll need to keep the workout in mind while planning that meal. Athletes who need to go home right after testing should do their best to still be at Greenbelt Lake by 3:35pm for practice that day. Please let me know by Tuesday if you do not plan to take the bus from school. If we have 14 athletes or fewer who need transportation from the school, we won't need more than my small bus for the trip.

Athletes who break 18:10 in the time trial will be treated as though they have met our 30-minute standard; that time converts to 28:58 in the 5k, a margin I am comfortable accepting even at a shorter distance than what we compete at. This means those athletes will qualify for entry into the WCAC Championship regardless of their parkrun performance.

We're in the homestretch of the season! Let's finish strong.