GIRLS CROSS COUNTRY ROUNDUP: Pucilowski claims individual title, leads AH team to district repeat
Anna Pucilowski returned to the top of District 2 Class 3A, helped her Abington Heights team remain there against strong competition and thought, momentarily, that she had achieved a state-level goal.
When the first set of results was produced from the Class 3A girls race at the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association Cross Country Championships Nov. 2 at the Hershey Parkview Course, the District 2 champion was listed in the 25th spot, the last to earn a medal.
After a photo review of the finish line, however, Pucilowski was re-scored as the 26th-place finish, just missing a state medal.
The individual district title was Pucilowski's second and that made the junior a big part of team titles in each of her three seasons. She was second individually a year ago.
"I felt like I took my training to the next level this year and it really paid off," Pucilowski said.
District 2 Class 3A
MESHOPPEN — By the time Pucilowski arrived at this year's district championship, she felt like she was ready to return to the top of the Class 3A field.
"Last year, I was dealing with some other issues, but this year I knew I wanted to win and I knew I was ready for it," the Abington Heights junior said. "I really had confidence in my training coming into this so that was nice."
Pucilowski took control from the start and ran to a victory by more than 30 seconds in 18:49.5, 52.6 seconds faster than her runner-up finish a year ago.
"I knew I was going to kind of be running by myself most of the time," Pucilowski said. "I just had to accept that mentally and try to run consistent splits most of the time."
With Pucilowski leading the way and four teammates joining her in the top 12, Abington Heights won a meeting of unbeaten conference champions 32-41 over Crestwood.
The last time Crestwood was in Class 3A, in 2021, it won the district title. In 2022 and 2023, Abington Heights and Crestwood, which was in Class 2A for that two-year cycle, both won titles. This season, the teams were unbeaten Lackawanna League and Wyoming Valley Conference.
Marley Gilboy, Reese Morgan and Calli Gilboy all earned district top-10 medals by placing between fourth and eighth.
Morgan Kresge was 12th to complete the five-runner team score.
Kenadi Lotz was 18th and Kiera Crowell 21st.
District 2 Class 2A
MESHOPPEN — Scranton Prep's Sophia Boland medaled with a 17th-place finish, but just missed qualifying for the state meet.
The top 20 earned medals, but Boland missed out on an individual spot in the state meet by two places and 13 seconds.
Dallas, led by Madison Hedglin's third gold-medal winning effort, edged Valley View 71-74 for the team title and both advance to the state meet.
Scranton Prep was eighth out of 10 teams with 187 points.
District 2 Class A
MESHOPPEN — Averie Higgins finished 32nd out of 66 to lead Lackawanna Trail, which did not have a full team entered.
Elk Lake won; Holy Cross claimed the second state spot and Lakeland's Emily Black was the individual champion.
PIAA Championships
Pucilowski's 26th-place finish out of 236 runners led the way as Abington Heights finished 11th out of 20 teams.
North Allegheny won the team title 60-118 over State College. Abington Heights put up a score of 261.
Pucilowski was the top District 2 finisher in the race and had the district's second-best time behind Class 2A fourth-place finisher Madison Hedglin from Dallas.
Reese Morgan was 62nd.
The other five Comets runners are all sophomores.
Calli Gilboy was 131st, Morgan Kresge 140th, Marley Gilboy 163rd, Kenadi Lotz 185th and Kiera Crowell 216th.
Lackawanna League
Abington Heights repeated as champion, going 23-0 in the Lackawanna League.
Scranton Prep was 15-8 while Lackawanna Trail went 4-19.
Paul Short Invitational
Lehigh University hosted 228 full high school cross country teams plus representatives from 29 more for a total of 2,278 runners Oct. 4 for the annual Paul Short Invitational.
The Abington Heights girls turned in the strongest performance among the 18 District 2 teams that made the trip to Bethlehem for one of the state's premier races.
Anna Pucilowski led the way for the Comets, placing 15th out of 345 in the Girls Gold race. The Gold races featured the strongest fields of the three races conducted for each gender.
Pucilowski's time of 18:29.2 was the 17th best posted out of 1,034 girls that competed on the day.
Abington Heights finished sixth in the Gold field of 35 teams and runners from four other schools.
Reese Morgan was 47th, Kiera Crowell 55th, Calli Gilboy 71st and Marley Gilboy 75th, all placing in the top 22 percent of the field to form the five-runner team score.
Scranton Prep was 19th of 35 teams in Girls White.
Sophia Boland led the way by placing 63rd of 307.
