Mercersburg opened its boys' cross country season with a strong third place finish (out of twelve teams) at the Frankfort Invitational in Ridgeley, WV September 14.

Winston Watkins '25 (18:05.1) and Joseph Cechini '28 (18:06.9) finished 10th and 11th to pace the Storm with Ryan Duplessis '25 (18:54.9) not far behind them in 22nd place. Watkins and Cechini both earned medalist honors by finishing in the top 15. Ahman Habib '26 (19:56.5), Will Wallace '27 (20:08.1), Iman Zhakan '26 (21:35.6) and Frederick Wu '26 (21:45.5) completed the scoring for Mercersburg.

Head coach David Grady commented, "This was the first race of the season for our team. After several solid weeks of training, it was good to see how our athletes responded in a race situation. Winston Watkins, the team’s top returner, ran a smart and strong race from start to finish. Newcomer Joey Cechini was right on Watkins’ heels, which is a wonderful first race and a welcome addition at the front for the team.  Ryan DuPlessis, new to the team but experienced as a runner, was running ahead of Watkins and Cechini in the early stages of the race, but had to back off a bit due to a sore hamstring that flared up. Once he is back to full strength, the front three look solid. Our success as a team will increase if we can close the gap between our top three runners and our fourth and fifth runners. It was good to see how we matched up with other teams who already had several races under their belt. To take third place was a very nice finish for our team. The first two teams were quite strong, but we fared well against the rest of the competition."     

In the Junior Varsity competition Mercersburg took the top two spots with James Coors '27 (20:25.1) finishing first and Matthew Orders '28 (21:13.1) second as the Storm recorded the top overall team score.

For complete results click here. 

Next up for the boys is a meet at Georgetown Prep (North Bethesda, MD) on Saturday, September 21 at 11:30 am.