The Riverview boys cross country team has been a consistent commodity at the PIAA championships the past several seasons.
The Raiders’ runner-up finish in the Class A race Nov. 2 in Hershey was the team’s fifth top-five placement in six years.
Riverview hoped to follow up its WPIAL championship performance from White Oak Park a week earlier, but Winchester Thurston, second to the Raiders at WPIALs, proved to be too strong at the state meet, winning with 89 team points, 16 better than Riverview’s 105.
“We have a tremendous amount of respect for Coach Frey and his Winchester Thurston program, and I think they do for us as well,” Riverview coach Palma Ostrowski said. “Their senior group is a whole lot like our senior group. Both are real class acts.
“While the athletes follow each other on Strava and social media, the only trash talk occurs when they argue who would win a 7-on-7 football game. We just know it will be good, hard competition every time we race. We both like representing the WPIAL in a strong manner, and we feel like we’ve both done that well, particularly the last four years with these seniors.”
The only time in the past six seasons Riverview didn’t finish in the top five was the 2020 covid season when, despite finishing as the WPIAL Class A runner-up, only the WPIAL champion advanced to states.
Led at this year’s state meet by the top-25 medal-winning performances of seniors Holden Deasy (13th) and Chris Barnes (18th), and sophomore Ashton Saunders (25th), the Raiders earned silver for the second year in a row and the third time since 2019.
“When we beat them at WPIALs this year, it was very close, and they finished higher than us at the No. 1, No. 2 and No. 5 positions,” Ostrowski said. “The math got harder in a larger meet like states because there were more runners between their No. 5 and our No. 5 than at WPIALs.
“While we felt like we could repeat our advantage at No. 3 and No. 4, we kind of knew that if they ran their best, it would probably be too tall of an order. They clearly went out and did that.”
Rounding out the top five in the Class A boys team standings were District 2’s Elk Lake (134 points), District 10’s Lakeview (137) and District 9’s Central Clarion (158).
Senior Micah Ivy placed 34th despite battling through an upper respiratory illness.
“Micah was a real hero for us, and even though his sickness prevented him from being an individual medalist, his performance ensured that the team stayed in contention and got on the team podium,” Ostrowski said.
“He sacrificed his individual race by running conservatively during the very fast first mile as to not risk “bonking” in the aloha hills. He maintained contact and as our No. 4 on this day, he beat every other team’s fourth runner. We were so proud of him and happy that he was able to hold that PIAA team trophy.”
Rounding out the Riverview boys performances at states were freshman Oscar Smith (113th), junior Braden Longstreth (135th) and senior Levi Roupas (171st).
It was Deasy and Barnes’ fourth run at the PIAA championships; the third for Ivy; and the second for Saunders, Roupas and Longstreth.
Smith’s PIAA debut was not without adversity, as he lost one of his shoes right before the first-kilometer checkpoint.
“One of the coaches was there and witnessed it, gathered the shoe, and then went straight to the Aloha hills to give Oscar the option to stop and put it on,” Ostrowski said. “Oscar waved off the option four different times on the hills as he didn’t want to lose a second. We knew that while there was some mixed terrain, the course was almost entirely a grass and dirt trail, so we didn’t force a stoppage.
“His determination not to stop was probably due, at least in part, to how the coaches ingrain how important ‘focus’ is at states. We always joke that with so many good runners, if you blink during the race, you lose 10 spots. So, Oscar probably did a mental calculation that stopping to put on a shoe could cost a whole lot more.”
Ostrowski said the shoe will have its place in the school trophy case beside the team’s 2024 PIAA trophy.