Winston Watkins '25 led the Blue Storm to an impressive 7th place finish among the 24 teams competing at the Ben Bloser Invitational Cross Country Meet, held at Big Springs (PA) high school September 16.

Watkins earned a medal for the second straight week by finishing 14th (the top 15 received medals) in the individual competition. As a team, Mercersburg's top five runners earned scoring points and put the team in the #7 spot in the AA division. Those five were Watkins, Brendan Shorb '24 (44th), Jake Cruikshank '24 (45th), Bryson Brown '24 (57th) and Kaori Graham-Myrie '24 (70th).

Head coach David Grady said, "Winston Watkins ran a strong race from start to finish, resulting in his best time ever (17:13) in a 5k cross country meet. It is a good sign that in only his second race of the season, Winston is already well ahead of where he was last year when he was Co-Most Outstanding Player of the team (shared with Cole Smith '23, who is now running for Franklin & Marshall). Brendan Shorb and Jake Cruikshank both ran good races and worked together in the later stages of the race. Bryson Brown, who was the team’s #2 runner last week, looked a little tired today, but still had a solid performance. Kaori Graham-Myrie made significant progress over last week, where he was 1 minute 52 seconds behind our 4^th runner.  This week he closed that gap between him and our 4^th man to 43 seconds. Getting our 5^th runner closer to the top four runners will be a significant factor in improving our team finishes, where the places of the top five runners make up the score."

For complete meet results, click here.

Next up for the Blue Storm is the Georgetown Classic, hosted by Georgetown Preparatory School (North Bethesda, MD) on Saturday, September 23 at 9 am.