On a day when River Hill’s girls were going for their third straight state title and rain had torn apart Hereford’s course, Hawks coach Earl Lauer kept his pre-race message short and simple.

“I told them, ‘Run two-thirds of the race with your head and the last third with your heart and if you do that we’ll win,’ ” Lauer said. “They’ve worked too hard to let someone come here and take it from them.”

Motivational words in tow, River Hill came out Saturday and put together one of its strongest races of the season, particularly over the final third of the 3-mile race. Five runners finished in the top 20 and the Hawks captured the Class 3A state title with a 68-81 victory over Hereford.

Leanne Young, who finished fourth, was River Hill’s top finisher, but it was depth that pulled the team through.

“This is a team sport, it’s about team,” said Lauer, who was also coach of the Atholton girls teams that won three straight state titles from 1987-89. “It’s not that you have the No. 1 kid, you’ve got to have five girls. And this could potentially be the best team I’ve ever had, which is funny because I said the same thing two years ago when several of these girls were freshmen.”

Individually, the 3A girls race belonged to Mt. Hebron senior Becky Yep, who came into this fall having finished second and third the last two years in the season-ending meet. This time around, she methodically increased her lead after going through the dip for the first time to win by 15 seconds.

The championship secured Yep a postseason sweep of counties, regional and states, and by the end of the day she wasn’t the only county runner to accomplish the feat. Glenelg’s Robby Creese, in his first-ever state cross country meet, crossed the line in 17:30 to win the 2A boys title.

No other county teams or individuals, between the 3A boys and 2A girls, captured championships.

Class 3A

River Hill’s girls needed contributions from everyone to win its third title in a row, but the boost provided by Kendall Auth, who missed counties and regionals with the H1N1 virus, was particularly important.

The junior, who was ninth at last year’s 2A state meet, crossed the line as River Hill’s second runner and the 15th overall. She said Hereford’s hilly course sets up perfectly for her.

“I’m not really built like a runner. I have awful posture and lean forward at like a 45 degree angle, so I tend not to do very well on flat courses,” Auth said, “But because this course is really nothing but hills it suits me really well.”

Young did her job up front, finishing fourth with a time of 21 minutes flat, three spots ahead of Hereford’s top runner, Lauren Kennedy. Then with Auth (15th), followed by Payton Lawrence, Anna Demaree and Meghan Heneghan in positions 17-19, the Hawks were able to cruise to the double-digit victory.

Of River Hill’s top seven only one is a senior (Jenn King, 37th), which means this group will be back gunning for it all again next fall.

“The girls are pumped (right now), and I told them we are going for four (in a row),” Lauer said. “We are going to try and have them win every year they’re in high school.”

For Yep, winning her first state championship caused an overflow of emotion immediately after she crossed the finish line.

“I don’t cry, and I cried after I came over the line,” Yep said. “I am so overwhelmed. It’s a mix of joy and the feeling of knowing it’s over … I mean this is my last cross country race.”

Yep found herself in a battle early on, running step-for-step with Clarksburg’s Abigail Daley through the first mile. As the two entered the dip for the first time, Daley even managed to pull in front by a few meters.

At the top of the hill, though, Yep made her move.

“It’s so mental and I really had to correct myself and I said, ‘OK, you have to pass her back right now, because if you let her go you are going to just fall back,' " Yep said.

The strategy worked as Yep picked up valuable seconds going around the soccer field, roughly 2 miles into the race. By the time she got back to the dip, her lead was up to a comfortable 13 seconds.

“With how muddy it was I kept telling myself anything can happen. You never know,” Yep said. “I pushed myself the entire time like she was right behind me.”

There weren’t any slips down the stretch and Yep crossed the line in 20:25. Daley ended up second with a time of 20:40, while North Harford’s Megan Schott was third in 20:51.

As a team, Mt. Hebron took third with 109 points.

In the boys race, the county’s top finishers were Wilde Lake’s Kikanae Punyua (sixth, 17:40) and Mt. Hebron’s Constantine Matsakis (eighth, 17:45). Mt. Hebron was third in the boys team competition with a score of 159, which ended up being 42 points behind first-place Damascus (117).

A pack of nearly 10 guys, which included Punyua, Matsakis, Atholton’s Matt Pacheco and Reservoir’s Eric Schuler, were bunched together for the first two miles. Pacheco actually was the leader at the mile mark. However, a few slips and a fall late in the race cost him and he ended up 10th.

Punyua, in his first state championship race, ended up 28 seconds off the first-place pace of Chopticon’s Tyler Ostrowski (17:12).

Class 2A

Not only had Glenelg’s Robbie Creese, who is in his first year running cross country, never ran in a state championship meet, but he had never even run a competitive race at Hereford before Saturday.

Knowing that he was lacking in the experience category, Creese’s strategy was to go out as fast as he could and then try to hang on.

“I was trying to run the first mile at a really high speed, I think it was something like 5:10, and hopefully tire out everyone behind me,” Creese said. “Some of my best races have been like that.”

Creese had a 5-meter lead at the mile marker and opened up a 25-meter lead heading into the dip for the first time. He managed to maintain that cushion for the most part all the way until he made his way back into the dip.

The fast pace, however, was slowly beginning to take its toll.

Over the final half mile of the race Creese’s lead began shrinking and, with 400 meters left, Bel Air’s Tyler Muse pulled himself within a few feet of the Glenelg junior. But just as Muse appeared ready to pull ahead, Creese found an extra gear.

“I didn’t know how close he was, but I didn’t want to look either,” Creese said. “My dad always tells me not to look back because if the other guy sees you then he’s going to go faster because it looks like you’re fading.”

Creese ended up crossing the line in 17:30, beating Muse by two seconds. Glenelg senior Austin Clark ended up finishing third, making up time on the hills to post a time of 17:35 and give the Gladiators two runners in the top three.

“I tell you what, Robbie Creese … I mean I owe him everything,” Clark said. “It’s his first year running and he pushed me every day in practice. I’m a senior and he’s a junior, but I learned so much from him even though he’s younger than me.

“This today was what I trained for and I felt like I left everything out there.”

Even with the strong top two guys, Glenelg fell just short in the team competition. The Gladiators (second place) posted a team total of 90, which was 22 points behind first-place Winters Mill.

In the girls race, Oakland Mills freshman Sarah Brand (fifth, 21:16) was the only county runner in the top 10.

Brand, who was second at regionals, said she couldn’t have asked for a better way to close out her first high school season.

“I’m really shocked that I did so well,” Brand said. “I was dead coming up the hill the last time, but I tried to keep thinking positive thoughts. I kept saying, ‘I’m almost done, I can do this.' "

Brand’s teammate, Tiffany Lang, finished 12th and the two of them helped the Scorpions take fourth as a team with 132 points. Century was first with 39.

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