Park Flies High At Regions, States

By Amy Russell
As the winter season gets in full swing at Severna Park High School, the indoor track team has the opportunity to build on the success the team experienced in the fall with a roster that includes the bulk of the talented fall competitors. Both the Falcon boys and girls cross country teams clinched third place in the 4A Maryland State Meet, just days after sweeping the top spots in the East Regionals.
With a total of 171 points, senior Ben Pershall (17:15), sophomore Sam Pershall (17:28), senior Connor Whitney (17:30), senior Chris Chitterling (18:00), freshman Ryan Forsyth (18:11), sophomore Ben Cambon (18:37) and senior Tyler Pitkanen (19:01) swooped in to take third place with an average time of 17:41, just behind state leaders Walter Johnson Churchhill high schools.

On the girls team, junior Michelle Nelson earned a top ten spot overall. Following her, junior Maddie Clouser, senior Lauren Schoener, senior Laura Patterson, junior Jodie Clouser, junior Chris Patrick and junior Olivia Snow had enough fire-power to finish on the heels of the teams from Whitman High and Northwest.
Earlier in the season the same group of Severna Park athletes clinched first place in the East region. The girls gathered 31 points, a whopping 14 points in front of the second place team from Broadneck. During the event, Jodie Clouser came in second place overall in 20:27, followed closely by Nelson who took third in 20:33. Schoener finished seventh (20:47), Maddie Clouser took eighth (20:49), Patrick finished eleventh (21:04), Snow fourteenth (21:17) and Patterson fifteenth (21:35).
On the boys side, Ben Pershall finished fourth with a time of 17:03 and Sam Pershall (17:17) closed out the top ten boys. Severna Park also got solid efforts from Ben Cambon (17:35), Chris Chitterling (17:37), Connor Whitney (17:38), Jimmy Shipley (18:03) and Ryan Forsyth (18:25).