Dover's Charles Gibson wins state Division One cross country championship

 

 

By Chuck Durante

Special to The State News

 

 

Confronting the state's most demanding cross country course in brutal cold, Charles Gibson lapped the field to win the state Division One championship yesterday, leaving friends and fans wondering how good he might yet become.

 

After winning last week's Henlopen Conference championship by 50 seconds, the Dover High School senior was equally dominant at Brandywine Creek State Park, taking command by the end of the first mile, finishing in 17:25.8, some 25 seconds ahead of Dominic Della Pelle of Salesianum.

 

Runners who sweltered through conference and county championships in torturous 80-degree heat last weekend, yearning for a chill, Saturday ran a course in 45 degrees-- both its temperature and the angles of some of its hills.

 

“It's one of the hardest courses on the East Coast, not one I want to come to too often,” said Gibson, who finished seventh in the Salesianum Invitational against some of the East's best runners last month.

 

“I ran like I had nothing to lose. There's no tomorrow. But I didn't want too much of a big lead at first,” explained Gibson. Coach [Jim Solomon] and I decided I shouldn't be more than 10 seconds in the lead at first. I wanted an easy start and a hard finish. This is a course where it doesn't matter who comes in first in the beginning.”

 

Third in last year's state meet at Killen's Pond, Gibson began preparing for this meet just weeks after finishing fifth at 3,200 meters in last spring's state meet. He was the top underclassman in each meet.

 

Gibson's practices took his teammates all over the city. “We run to the college, on the track, around the perimeter of the school, through neighborhoods, all over.”

 

“He's a great leader. He leads by example. He doesn't criticize the other kids. He's always encouraging,” said coach Solomon. “His parents have raised a wonderful young man.”

 

Gibson and his teammates –– Jerome Phillip, Bernard Yanos, Steven Adamson, Jonathan Lazzeri, Maurice Miles and Ronnie Suggs –– prepared for the conference and state meets with practices full of repeat sprints. The workouts would begin with six quarter-mile runs, followed by six 200-meter sprints, then repeat 40, 60 and 80-meter runs.

 

“When you run up hills in championship conditions and chilly weather, your legs get wobbly. You need oxygen. These repeat sprints teach you how to recover,” said Solomon. “I learned this from [Caesar Rodney coach] Charlie Bell.”

 

Gibson might be Dover's greatest distance runner since Bruce Harris ‘85 or Mike Patterson ‘69, but Solomon discovered him almost by accident. In the fall of his freshman year, he was often late to school –– but due to a chronically late bus. After a meeting at the school when his mother, Lisa Brokenbrough, explained the situation, Gibson gave her a kiss.

 

“That impressed me,” recalls Solomon. “This is a young man who was unafraid to show affection to his mother. And I asked him if he had ever tried cross country.”

 

By the end of the fall, he was running the sport's 5,000-meter courses under 22 minutes. By the end of his sophomore year, he put aside basketball.

 

An angular 6-foot-4 with legs that consume copious real estate and an inner drive to excel, Gibson has a body and soul that fascinate college coaches. Once Gibson further refines his running style, his potential could range from the 400-meter hurdles to the 10,000 meters.

 

Salesianum won its third boys title, its 30th in 35 years, but will carry bittersweet memories, from an uncharacteristically sluggish fourth place in last weekend's New Castle County meet, behind archrivals Archmere and St. Mark's, as well as the team that will likely be crowned by the coaches' association as the state's team of the year at next month's awards banquet, long-unheralded Tatnall, one of whose coaches, Pat Castagno, ran at Salesianum.

 

A tight pack of Kyle Luke, Byron Friend, Anthony Swierzbinski, and Brian Line led Caesar Rodney to third place.

 

Among girls, Caesar Rodney junior Liz Paul finished in the top tier in Division One for the third straight year. Part of one of the strongest generations yet seen in Delaware girls cross country, she finished sixth in a race where just one senior made the top 15. Somehow, the Riders, diminished by graduation and injury, finished 5th among 15 teams. “I'm so proud of our team,” said Paul. “We've come a long way. We started with barely enough girls. We recruited and did well.”

 

Anna Broussell was the fifth state champion from Brandywine in seven years -- a streak broken only by Caesar Rodney's Jill Hajec -- while Padua won the girls Division One title.  Broussell supplanted as champion her teammate Jessica Leitsch, who finished third.  Ninth grader Jenna McCartan, who finished second, led Padua to the team title.

 

“It’s a great partnership, a great friendship, a fierce partnership.  They push each other,” said Brandywine coach Michelle Flanagan of her two state champions.

 

In Division Two, Cape Henlopen junior Rebecca Ridell not only led all downstate finishers in placing 5th among Division Two girls, but affected the team title. When she passed Tower Hill's Julie Pike for fifth place on the final hill, and Archmere's Justine Raspanti overcame Seaford's Caitlin McGroerty to finish 10th several seconds later, Archmere's 1-point margin of victory was created.

 

“I went out fast but knew the hill was waiting,” said the versatile Ridell, one of the conference's top discus throwers and milers last year. She helped Cape to fourth place, with five teammates -- Jennifer Betts, Amy Mallamo, Elizabeth DeCastro, Mary Beth Betts and Natalie Dorman –– in the top 50.

McGroerty closed a glittering career by leading Seaford to fifth in a strong field. As a benchmark of how forbidding the glacial weather proved, McGroerty ran 50 seconds slower than her 21:02 bolt through the same course at the Salesianum Invitational five weeks earlier.

 

Lisa Klein, a Tatnall junior, won the Division Two meet, joining Archmere’s Katie Himelreich (1984-85-86) and Tower Hill's Jeff Brokaw (1965-67-68) as the third three-time state champion in the 50-year history of Delaware high school cross country.

 

Among Division Two boys, Mitch Fryling (19th place), Andrew Perciful (27) and Brian Lloyd (30) led Seaford's boys to fourth among the 21 teams, just ahead of St. Andrew's. Evan Mock (18) led seventh-place Cape Henlopen. Joe Morman, the top downstate finisher at 15th, helped Smyrna to tenth.

 

Tatnall's Kyle Kershner upended defending champ Peter McBride of Archmere for his second state title in three years, leading Tatnall to a stunning title over defending champ Archmere, which had conquered the Hornets by 23 points at last week's New Castle County meet.

 

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