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Photos courtesy of Marvin Gentry/AHSAA.
Mountain Brook’s Clayton Collins runs ahead of Davis Plowden during the Class 6A boys race in the AHSAA state cross-country meet held at Oakville Indian Mounds Park in November 2021.
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Photos courtesy of Marvin Gentry/AHSAA.
Mountain Brook’s Reagan Riley competes in the Class 6A girls race in the AHSAA state cross-country meet.
The Mountain Brook High School cross-country team is preparing to one-up itself this upcoming track season after a successful season last year.
Spartans coach Michael McGovern said he is proud of how both teams finished last year.
The boys team performed at a higher level than he expected, finishing second to Scottsboro at the Class 6A state meet.
The team was led to its second-place finish by senior Davis Plowden, who placed sixth with a 15:47 finish. He was followed by Clayton Collins (seventh, 15:48), Harry Clark (17th, 16:18), Bibb Albright (20th, 16:28), George Pelekis (29th, 16:42), Branum Lloyd (41st, 16:55) and Marc Debruge (45th, 16:58).
“We ran our best that we could at the end of the season, and they were just the better team,” McGovern said. “I couldn’t be prouder of the way those guys performed last year.”
The girls team found victory at the state meet with a first place win in the 6A division.
Mountain Brook had been accustomed to dominating the competition over the last 25 years, but the Spartans girls won the last of 13 consecutive state championships in 2015. Homewood won four of the last five state crowns until the Spartans squashed their streak in November.
The team was led by rising senior Reagan Riley, who capped off a dominant season with a win and a time of 17:39. She was followed right behind by teammate Clark Stewart, who ran the race in 18:13. Hunter Anderson (sixth, 18:34), Mary Katherine Malone (eighth, 18:52), Lucy Benton (ninth, 18:54), Kennedy Hamilton (12th, 19:06) and Virgina Averyt (20th, 19:43) all accrued points for the team as well.
McGovern said he discovered through research that they finished with the fastest average time at a state meet in Alabama history.
“Some say that makes us the best team ever,” McGovern said. “I don’t want to compare teams of different generations, but they were definitely one of the better ones for sure.”
McGovern said the team is currently working on having a tighter spread as well as replacing two of its top runners that graduated from the boys team this year.
“We’re trying to get a tighter spread from our first runner to our fifth runner,” McGovern said. “That’s the ideal goal for us, to close that down to as small of a time interval as possible.”
McGovern said since there are a lot of “superstars” on the girls team, he’s excited to give incoming freshmen more experience.
“We have some superstars, but we also want to start to work on bringing along the next group,” McGovern said. “We want to make sure we are letting some of those newcomers get some opportunities to help us be successful in the years to come.”
McGovern said he’s looking forward to new faces on both teams stepping into pivotal roles this upcoming season.
“On the boys side, we’re going to have two freshmen in our lineup that could potentially be running in our top five. We have a young man, J.K. Roberts, who missed almost an entire year and a half due to injury. He’s healthy again, so it’ll be fun for him to come back and compete for a top position,” McGovern said. “On the girls' side, I’m looking forward to seeing who those next girls are going to be. We’ve had some girls that have been contributing pretty substantially for us for several years now, and I’m excited to see who’s going to be the next group.”
