November 10, 2005

sports

Bulldog sports roundup

YSHS junior Sam Borchers trying to stay ahead of rival runners during the Division III state championship on Saturday.

Borchers places 7th at state XC meet

By Lauren Heaton

The look on Sam Borchers’s face after Saturday’s state cross country championships was not what one would expect from the seventh-place finisher in Ohio for Division III schools.

Borchers, who entered the race with high expectations, was clearly showing his disappointment, and a place alongside the best in the state was no consolation for the junior at Yellow Springs High School.

“It was a poorly run race, and I didn’t go with it enough in the execution of the race,” Borchers said after finishing the 3.1-mile race in 16:26, with an average of 5:18 per mile. “I was there in the first mile, but after that I felt like I was running in this fog of unconscious awareness.”

The only YSHS cross country runner to qualify for the state meet, Borchers went into Saturday’s race with 10 straight season wins and easy victories in the district and the regional championships.

Last year as a sophomore Borchers finished eighth in the state, and he figured he could only get better, he said.

But with success comes pressure, and Borchers had heard area coaches talk about who had the best chance of winning. Some were for him and some were against him, he said, but that they were talking about him at all made him uncomfortable.

He arrived at Scioto Downs race track in Columbus on Saturday without the will and adrenaline rush that usually fuels his victories, he said.

Starting out with the 152 other runners, Borchers quickly jumped out with the lead pack and went out of the stadium for the first loop in fifth place. When the runners returned to the stadium, Borchers was in seventh, and a gap was growing between him and the runner ahead of him. Borchers held his place as the athletes left the stadium once more and returned to round the final bend to the finish.

Cortland Maplewood’s Andy Arnio won the race in 15:47, followed by his teammate Andy Morgan, who finished in 15:55, and Christopher Olinger, from West Lafayette Ridgewood, who finished in 15:59.

Cortland Maplewood won the state team title with 79 points. Old Fort came in second with 154, followed by Toledo Christian with 160 points.

YSHS cross country coach Vince Peters said the fact that Borchers wasn’t tired after the race told him that he didn’t run as hard as he could have.

“He’s the fastest runner out there, he’s definitely the state mile champ and 15:54 is his best time,” Peters said. “He jogged and got seventh in the state. Seventh isn’t bad, it’s good. It’s just our expectations were a little higher.”

The season isn’t over for Borchers, who will compete in the Footlocker Cross Country Championships in Wisconsin later this month and in the USA National Junior Olympics in Rhode Island in December.

He said he feels he’s at a “level break” in his career, a barrier that separates really good from great.

“I’m right on that line, and I keep on trying to jump across it. But then I go and do something like this,” Borchers said. “It was a wake-up call. There’s no way I’m going to do that again next year.”

Contact: lheaton@ysnews.com