More than half of the first 23 finishers across the line were from Kingsway or Shawnee, which is insane. Kingsway finished with a 42-49 margin of victory, and nobody else was within 85 points of either school.
How dominating were Kingsway and Shawnee? Either one could have rested its first two runners and still placed second in team scoring with their third through seventh girls.
This race featured six girls under 19 minutes and an incredible 28 girls under 20 minutes!!! Yeah, the course is fast, but 28 girls under 20 minutes is nuts!
Shawnee sophomore Isabella Turner was the individual winner with a swift 18:22, but junior Lauren Krott and senior Alexis Mullarkey went 2-3 in 18:43 and 18:49 for Kingsway. Shawnee sophomore Claire Hauser was Shawnee’s second across the line, sixth in 18:56.
Senior Kylie Anicic took eighth for Kingsway in 19:05, but Shawnee answered with senior Claire Rankin and junior Grace Kearns in 11th and 12th.
Kingsway’s fourth was freshman Ashlynn Burke, who ran 19:26, and was quickly followed by fifth runner Allie Pierontoni, a sophomore, who ran 19:29 for 16th.
Two more Shawnee runners quickly crossed — junior Lauren Tenet in 19:42 and senior Laura Mavracic in 19:44.
Kingsway’s sixth runner, freshman Sydney Watts, finished 23rd in 19:49 and beat the THIRD runner from every school other than Shawnee.
And Shawnee’s SEVENTH runner, senior Georgia Larzelere, ran 20:05 for 33rd and beat the fourth runner from every school other than Kingsway and Southern.
The team title was the third in a row for the Kingsway girls and eighth overall. The winning score of 42 is lowest since Shawnee won in 2001 with 35 points. And Kingsway’s average of 19:06 is the fastest in history on the Delsea course by a Group 4 school!
Incredibly, Shawnee’s scoring pack averaged 19:10, which is the fastest non-winning average time ever in Group 4!
The previous-fastest non-winning average time was Lenape’s 19:19 back in 2006. That came in a 58-60 loss to Cherry Hill East. The previous lowest non-winning score was Shawnee’s 53 points in 2002 behind Toms River East’s 46.
Kingsway, ranked No. 2 in the state, had a terrific 46-second span between Krott and Pierontoni.
Turner is the fifth individual winner in Shawnee history, joining Deanna Germano in 1985, Julia Goldstein in 1990, Liz Moore three straight years from 1992 through 1994 and Nina Benedixen in 2014.
From the Backstretch by Reuben Frank 