Fridays in late October are always eventful at Sunken Meadow State Park. The trees lining the pond turn a burnished orange and the quiet paths come to life with hundreds of thundering feet. Champions are crowned at New York’s premier cross country course and last Friday another Stony Brook runner was added to that prestigious lineage.

Sophomore Margot Rashba won her second consecutive individual Class D County Championship, covering the course in 21:14 and besting Southold’s Colette Steele by 32 seconds. Rashba is Stony Brook’s first female runner to repeat as champion since Laura Whitney won five consecutive titles from 1977-1981. Though the girls were unable to win a third consecutive County Title, falling 37-33, Kathy Kim (23:25/5th place) and Allie Damianos (24:48/8th place) will be joining Rashba in Syracuse, NY this weekend in the New York State Meet.

“Whenever I’m running with Margot, she always pushes me real hard,” Steele said. “I felt good during the race. I was going faster than usual because of Margot, and I ran well.”

~ Colette Steele to The Suffolk Times

On the boys’ side, Jacob Brummeler continued his fantastic freshman season by finishing runner-up in the county in a time of 19:28, just 11 seconds behind Southold’s Jonathan Rempe, also a freshman. The boys also fell to the Settlers, in ironically similar fashion to how they won last year. Tied at 28-28 after the race was completed, it was Southold’s sixth man that slipped in front of our sixth runner, giving them the tiebreaker for the championship. Joining Brummeler this weekend in the state meet will be Will Tseng (20:19/4th place), Jemal Hudson (20:30/6th place), Jeff Fung (21:12/7th place), and Terry Huang (21:35/9th place).

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