Donnelly repeats, Penncrest wins team title

UPPER PROVIDENCE — In 2018, Mike Donnelly won the Delaware County Cross Country Championships individual title as he led Haverford High to its first team title in the 55-year history of the meet.

Saturday afternoon at Rose Tree Park, Donnelly again was the first runner to cross the finish line in the county championship meet.

The team scoring turned out a little differently than in 2018. Haverford and Penncrest both scored 43 points, but the deciding factor in determining the team champion was the fact that Penncrest’s sixth finisher, Josh Senackerib, was 17th, while the Fords’ No. 6 man, Ryan Murray, placed 20th, giving the Lions their second team title in three years.

“It was like that Wednesday when we ran a Central League meet against them,” Penncrest coach George Munro said. “We had some guys who had to make up ground at the end in order to beat them. It was Jason (Abahazy, who was 10th), and Andrew (Woolery, 13th place) then and they did it again today. And some of Haverford’s runners finished a little differently today than they did Wednesday.”

Donnelly got to the finish line nine seconds faster than Penncrest’s Patrick Theveny, with Owen Maier of Episcopal Academy taking third place. Penncrest’s Jalen Chin was fourth, followed by Frank Brown of Radnor. Rounding out the top 10 were Paul Faggioli of Strath Haven, Haverford’s Ethan and Josh Fingerhut, Owen Leonard of Radnor, and Penncrest’s Abahazy. Patrick Kelly, who was 14th, was Penncrest’s No. 5 runner.

Donnelly and the two Fingerhuts were joined in Haverford’s top five by Will Field (11th) and Anthony Lawson (16th).

“I knew it would be Patrick and I battling it out for the lead,” Donnelly said. “I took it out and just checked out my surroundings and settled in. It’s hard not to come away with the team title again.

“We’ll be back here again next week for (the Central League Championships). And I know there’s no other people I’d rather be on the line with than my teammates.”

Theveny has been battling illness and injury for several weeks but felt well enough to go after Donnelly Saturday.

“I’m finally starting to feel better,” he said. “We were trading places on the lead for a while, and I knew when he wanted to take off I’d have to go with him.”

Chin saw what to expect from Haverford in the Central League meet earlier in the week.

“That was close, but we ended up winning,” he said. “Today we wanted to win again and did what we had to do.”

Maier is a second-year cross country runner who also is an outstanding rower.

“I wanted to run to stay in shape for rowing,” he said. “I put in a lot of mileage getting ready for the season. I was 19th in my first (Delco) race last year.”

Radnor’s Brown, Leonard, Jack Halberstadt, and Jimmy Kurtz all finished among the top 20 as the Raiders claimed third place in the team standings behind Penncrest and Haverford.

At the Paul Short Run:

Sean Garrett posted a time of 15:23 to take fourth place in the Boys Brown race. He was eight seconds slower than winner Robert DiDonato of Germantown Academy.

Aidan Doherty of Archbishop Carroll clocked in at 16 minutes, 18 seconds to take 16th place in the Boys White race.