Three-Peat: Severna Park Girls Win Another Cross-Country State Championship

“We > Me”

That motto marks the T-shirts of Severna Park High School athletes, who emphasize team success over individual accolades. That mindset also helped the Falcon girls finish first and the Falcon boys take second during the Class 3A cross-country state championships at Hereford High School on November 9.

To win their third straight title, the girls had to overcome Hereford High School’s three-mile course with sharp turns, trails and the infamous “dip.” Their score of 48 placed them ahead of Towson with 101 and Thomas S. Wootton with 142. Severna Park’s girls cross-country program now has nine championships in the record books.

Three weeks after finishing as the top girls runner in the Anne Arundel County championships, Josie Kamas led the pack for the Falcons as she took third place in the state finals with a time of 19:02.84. “Stick with people” was her goal during the first mile. When she saw the lead pack “just absolutely flying,” she adjusted her strategy.

“And then the timing it down the dip, it really started hurting, so I told myself just to run for the other six girls on my team, not running for myself but running for them,” Kamas said. “I just told myself, ‘How bad do you want it? How badly do you want to cross that line?’ I really wanted to do better than I did last year, so every single step I took, I thought, ‘This is one step closer to the goal that you want,’ and I just made sure that my actions in the race, passing people or speeding up, reflected how I wanted it to go.”

Kamas finished one spot higher and roughly 25 seconds better than she did in the 2023 state championship race.

Lexi Fitzsimmons was not far behind Kamas. Her time of 19:23.03 was good for seventh. She tried to stay with her teammates for the first mile and then she broke away.

“The second mile started to get a little tougher, so I made sure I was doing this for my team,” she said. “I tried to keep my head up and just worked with the people around me, kind of used them as motivation.”

The Falcons also got great performances from Kathryn Murphy (11th place, 19:39.63) and Jocelyn DiAngelo (12th place, 19:41.12). Sydney Davis (24th place, 20:26.95), Valeria Saenz (30th place, 20:37.75) and Natalie Bowman (37th place, 21:05.93) rounded out the top 40.

Severna Park cross-country coach Josh Alcombright was thrilled with his team’s effort.

“I think Lexi had a fantastic race today. She really stepped up,” he said. “They all ran really strong. Josie, that’s what we were looking for. She started out in probably ninth place after the mile and she moved up, and all the girls attacked in the second half of the race and they all moved up, and that is exactly what we were asking them to do.”

For Severna Park’s top two girls runners, the moment came down to the motto preached by their coach: “we is greater than me,” or as their T-shirts say, “We > Me.”

“I think when you work hard with each other, it helps motivate each other so that even if you’re having a hard time, you know you don’t want to let the rest of your team down,” Fitzsimmons said.

Kamas agreed, saying, “I’m honestly really happy and really proud, and honestly a little surprised, seeing everything pay off and everything we worked for come to us.”