Tatnall Sweeps Cross Country in Historic Fashion
By Chuck Durante
The first inkling came in 2001, when two Tatnall runners – Division Two champ Kyle Kershner and state MVP Meredith Lambert – reached the top tier of Delaware cross country. It seemed like a rare, almost exotic coincidence.
Two years later, Kershner, Tom Ward and Steve Brown made Tatnall’s boys the state’s top-ranked cross country team, beating Salesianum in the county meet, then Archmere in the state meet. Next spring, they paced Tatnall to the Division Two track championship, sweeping the mile 1-2-3.
Last year Lisa Klein won her fourth Division Two cross country title, then smashed the state indoor two-mile record, which had lasted 12 years, by 16 seconds. Jeff Strojny rambled off the soccer field to win the outdoor 800 for the second straight year.
All this success seemed like the apogee of a small school’s dreams for its track and cross country program, especially once all those runners graduated.
This year, though, they were outdone by their successors. Tatnall won the New Castle County Meet, the state’s premiere cross country event, in unseasonable warmth at Wintherthur, then dominated the state meet – in both genders.
• For the second straight year, Brian Sklodowski, a junior, won the County and state Division Two championships and was named the state’s outstanding male runner.
• Katie Kershner, Annie Castagno and Juliet Bottorff crossed the finish line nearly simultaneously for the girls championship in Division Two.
• The boys finished second in the featured race at the prestigious Manhattan Invitational in October, with Sklodowski fourth at Van Courtland Park.
• The girls team won the seeded race at September’s Great American Cross Country Festival in Cary, North Carolina, and finished the season ranked No. 3 in the U.S. Southeast.
“It’s Sports Illustrated material,” said Matt Brown, father of the 2004 mile champion. “It shows you what kids can do when the bar is set higher than anyone can believe.”
Since Patrick Castagno began coaching at Tatnall five years ago, the Hornets’ success has evolved from a pattern to a fixture, paralleling the success of Castagno’s alma mater.
“It’s a matter of kids buying into the program, and becoming committed to training year round,” says the upper school computer teacher, who emulates his coach at Salesianum, Rev. Joseph V. Beattie. “Like Father Beattie, I like the kids to have a lot of fun. We purposely find days on which we can play. That goes a long way. There need to be decompression days.
“We take a lot of breaks,” said Castagno, who duplicated the 1991 feat of Steve Lantz of A.I. du Pont by being named the state’s coach of the year for both boys and girls. “We run year round, but with different levels of intensity. During the winter, we pick up base training: no speed training, all strength work. You can only run at peak performance for limited periods of time. We try for two major peaks.”
Those peaks would be at the county meet in the fall and the Division Two meet in the spring.
The Tatnall boys defeated Salesianum, 71-75, to win the county meet not because Skodowski again proved that no lead is safe when he is in sneakers, but because Charlie Forbes, Andrew Ruoss, Mark Giblin and Cuffie Winkler remained nearly a pack, within 17 seconds of each other. That’s how to win a 26-school meet when your second runner finishes 15th.
Sklodowski was a fair basketball player when he began running in ninth grade. Athletic and competitive enough that he would be a significant contributor to Tatnall’s top-ranked basketball team, Sklodowski has concluded that continued improvement in running requires year-round commitment.
Still, he approaches cross country as a team sport: “I’ve spent the last three months going into battle with this team,” said Sklodowski after pulling away from Concord’s Chris Slate and Mount Pleasant’s Phil Weigel in the state meet. Ruoss, who skipped spring track just to concentrate on base training, finished sixth to lead the other Hornets, who took six of the top 13 places.
Ordinarily, a small school operates without a safety net, but Tatnall’s depth is breathtaking. In the county junior varsity race, usually headed by a nearly uninterrupted convoy of gold jerseys, Salesianum had unexpected company. The unofficial score was Sallies 35, Tatnall 42. Eliminate the Sals, and Tatnall beat the entire rest of New Castle County, 27-28. Tatnall’s top six JV runners all return next year.
The Tatnall girls’ victory at Winterthur was convincing, 39-66 over two-time defending champion Padua. Joanie Castagno followed the big three, giving the Hornets four of the top eight. Jenna McCartan transcended foot and hip injuries to take 20th place, and Alex Clapp (22nd) displaced two Padua scorers.
In the state meet, sophomore Kershner, freshman Bottorff and junior Annie Castagno traded the lead. “Throughout the race, whenever somebody felt good, she would go out to take the lead. Each of us took the lead at one point. The others would hang on for dear life,” said Annie.
In an earlier era, the three might have colluded for a three-runner dead heat, but that is impossible in an era of fully automated timing, and would have been antithetical to their cooperative competitiveness.
“It doesn’t matter who finished first,” said Kershner, who did. “It matters that we all came in together.” Kershner, Delaware’s fastest miler last year (4:56), improved her time at Bellevue – the most useful benchmark since all other big meets changed sites this year – by a minute (18:32).
How good were the Tatnall girls? Their times put them ahead of 10 of the 37 boys teams in the state meet, eight of the 26 teams at the county meet.
Annie and Joanie Castagno are twin daughters of their coach’s older brother Chris, who helped Salesianum to the 1977 state title. Another brother, Steve, was all-state for the Sals’ 1979 champions. Patrick’s running career was cut short by injury, but he never abandoned the sport, coaching under University of Delaware’s Jim Fischer while a graduate student, even publishing a cross country newsletter for Salesianum alumni.
To think that Tatnall’s boys finished last in the 1998 state meet. If not for Meredith Lambert’s top-ten finish as a ninth grader, the girls would have done likewise. A year later, coach Mark Ginn, now Tatnall’s athletic director, began ratcheting the program to competitive respect.
Delaware distance running is stronger than ever. As evidence, Castagno points to performances at Bellevue, once Willy du Pont’s horse farm, now Delaware’s fastest course. In 2001, the best times were 16:24 (Salesianum’s Tom Lord) and 19:13 (Caesar Rodney’s Jill Hajec and Brandywine’s Jessica Leitsch). This year, six boys finished under 16:00 and six girls broke 18:45.
The runners are also seeking challenges beyond Delaware. Pilgrimages to the Manhattan and Great American races are becoming increasingly common. After the official Delaware season ended with the state meet, three dozen Delaware runners from six schools journeyed over Thanksgiving weekend to New York for the Foot Locker regional championship. In past years, half that many would try the race. Sklodowski (16:11) and Kershner (18:36) ran the best Delaware times ever on the storied Van Courtland course.
Other highlights of the season:
DIVISION ONE GIRLS
Anna Brousell’s 63-second margin over Padua junior Jennifer Watunya belies how close the race appeared at Maintenance Hill. Brousell led by a half-dozen strides and looked to be laboring. Fooled us. Brousell exploded once she reached the crest of the hill, accelerating to an unprecedented third Division One title. (She was fifth as a freshman.) Brousell overwhelmed her Delaware opposition this year, also winning the same course by a minute in the Salesianum Invitational at 19:04.9. Had she any company in the third mile, Anna might have outkicked the course record of 18:57, set by Julia Pudlin as a Baldwin junior in 2000.
Brousell does nothing to call attention to herself except to win convincingly. She has dominated the sport like no one before her. She is the fourth runner – and third girl – to have won three state championships, but she is the only runner, boy or girl, to be named the state’s MVP three times. In each of her three state championships, she was more then 30 seconds ahead of the Division Two winner. She was similarly dominant last spring in track, winning the Division One mile by 9 seconds and the two-mile by 20 seconds. Like Kershner, she has come within three seconds of Vicki Huber’s 20-year-old record of 4:54.4 at 1,600 meters.
A. I. du Pont’s all-underclass team placed four in the top 14, five in the top 22 in finishing second, the school’s best performance since it won four championships in five years through 1993. Yet, the Tigers still have a hill to surmount next year. Even had no seniors run at the state meet, leaving Padua without Mary Kate McCaffrey and Samantha Lichtner, the Pandas would still have bested the Tigers for the state title, 43-49. Meanwhile, Padua runners finished 1-2 in the New Castle County JV race. Watunya’s phenomenal season would have been more obvious if not obscured by Brousell’s brilliance, with victories at the Catholic Conference (by 30 seconds) and University of Delaware meets and second place finishes at both big Brandywine Creek meets, the Salesianum Invitational and the state meet.
Four St. Mark’s runners finished in Division One’s top 18. The Spartans would have finished third at 61 in the hypothetical underclass-only race, and need just one breakthrough performance to vault higher among the elite.
Even without Samantha Lichtner, the Pandas took six of the top seven places in the Catholic Conference meet – against traditional powers St Mark’s, Archmere and Ursuline. Lichtner was primed for her third first-team all-state season, with the seventh best Delaware time at the Salesianum Invitational (20:44), when her ankle was struck by a field hockey ball. That she recovered to 21:12 for seventh in Division One meet was remarkable.
DIVISION TWO GIRLS
Danielle Riley of Lake Forest, Jennifer Betts of Cape Henlopen and Elizabeth Butterly of Milford, who finished 7th, 9th and 14th in the Division Two meet, had another distinction. They, and Delaware Military’s Katelyn Ogburn (21st), were the only four public school runners in the top 35. Given the past strength of Milford, Seaford, Cape and Lake, this year might prove to be an aberration, but the gap is striking.
The meet’s top six were from the Independent Conference, including Tower Hill senior Sydney Scott, whose fourth place finish, coupled with seventh place in the county meet, made her first team all-state in her first year of cross country, and Sanford ninth-grader Kim Madden, who at a school without spring track, will ply her speed in soccer this spring. Tower Hill’s Anna Pike was all-county for the fourth straight season.
St. Andrew’s finished fourth in a most unusual way. The Cardinals’ uniforms employ combinations of red, black and white. But three runners’ uniforms had a different pattern than the first four, so the official results bumped them to the end – even though the three finished 62nd, 75th and 96th in the field of 124. St. Andrew’s score was bloated by 60 points to 195, still good enough for fourth, between runner-up Archmere (105), Tower Hill (111) and fifth place Ursuline (203). The Saints had beaten Newark and Middletown to win the Middletown invitational in October.
DIVISION ONE BOYS
Salesianum championships are so common that the underlying drama is sometimes unfairly overlooked. This year’s accomplishment was special for the Sals, who won their 32nd Division One title in 37 years with almost a completely new cast. Junior Dominic DellaPelle succeeded teammate Mike Kowal as state champ, after two years of finishing second. His 16:45 pace, three seconds faster than Sklodowski in Division Two, was the fourth best by a Delaware runner on the post-1995 Brandywine Creek course. Sallies’ only other returning letterman, Kevin Wulff, was impaired by a stress fracture, gamely managing 42nd in the county meet, and not running in the state meet. Supporting DellaPelle were runners who spent most of 2004 running JV – James Jennings, Danny Segars, Joshua Hill, Jason Pyle and Mike Curry – and freshman Jon Mazzio, all in the top 21.
Sallies graduates five of its top eight – Jennings, Segars, Hill, Pyle and Wulff – but returns five JV’s who broke 18:30 at Winterthur, including winner Chris Lafferty. Might they return the county championship to Salesianum, which owned it for 18 of 21 years through 2002, but not since?
St. Mark’s top three underclassmen – Division One runner-up Drew Hoffman, Michael O’Brian and Tyler Rodgers – match up well, finishing in the top 16 at the state meet, but the Spartans will need an unexpected boost to replace all-stater Nick Pyle and repeat their second place finish in 2006. Third place Charter, which placed all its runners, including fourth place finisher Andy Weaver and five other underclassmen, in the top 40, is best positioned to challenge Salesianum next year. Caesar Rodney returns five top-60 runners, and might capitalize on the comfort of Killen’s Pond if coach Charlie Bell can find some help for third place finisher Jesse Brooks.
DIVISION TWO BOYS
Concord finished second. Remove all seniors – Tatnall had five – and Concord would have won the meet with 67 points. The Raiders have had intermittent success, most notably when Jim Filmont, Tom Carr and Yousuf Haq led them to second in Division One behind Tom Higley’s final Salesianum team in 1985, and have returned to prominence under Jeff Langrehr, county coach of the year in his first season last year.
Mount Pleasant’s Phil Weigel had a dream season, winning the Blue Hen Conference and the University of Delaware Invitational, being Sklodowski’s sole Delaware conqueror in winning the Bellevue Invitational, scoring the best time in either section of the Lake Forest Invitational, and winning his section of the Salesianum Invitational with the best time of all Delaware finishers. He finished second in the county meet and challenged Sklodowski in the state meet, before Chris Slate of Concord caught him for second place. Weigel ranks with Jamie Mance, Dan Foran, Paul Olivere, Jim Gano, John Pfotzer, Joe Richmond and Fred Swanson among the greatest runners in Green Knight history.
Delmar has momentum in its program, having fielded serviceable teams for three years, but still has not sent its runners to the state meet. Will the Wildcats appear next year at Killen’s?
And how about Laurel? The Bulldogs haven’t had a team since 2000. Yet, Laurel produced one of the state’s pioneer distance greats, Mike Lyon, who was inducted into the Delaware Track and Field Hall of Fame last month (November 22). Even though Laurel didn’t have a team, Lyon won the state 880 championship in 1961, becoming one of the first Delaware boys to break 2 minutes. How many more Mike Lyons might be going undiscovered in Laurel?