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| While Marc and Joan Hunter's Loudoun Valley High boys were winning the Virginia Class 4 title, their son Drew (above) placed first in the USATF national championship 2-mile in Staten Island, NY |
Granted, they weren’t needed last weekend as the boys racked up 31 points in the 1600 and 32 more in the 3200, en route to a championship winning 97-point total, which routed runner-up Blacksburg by 61.
Amazingly the event totals weren’t even a VHSL record, or Viking team record for that matter.
“Last year, our boys scored 37 points in the 1600, taking 1-6, and 8th. So this year was not quite as good, thanks to Omar's outstanding 2nd place effort,” said Viking co-coach Joan Hunter, referring to Dominion’s Omar Aougab, who trimmed seven seconds off his personal best to claim runner-up with a time of 4:21.30.
The Vikings did claim the first four spots in the 3200, with winner Jacob Hunter (9:26.49), second-place Carlos Shultz (9:27.89), Kellen Hasle (9:31.05) and Alec Venable (9:45.00) earning 29 points for the Valley, while Connor Wells (9:47.77) took sixth for the other three.
Sam Affolder (2:28.36) and Jacob Windle (2:34.28) went 2-4 in the 1000, and the 3200 relay of Windle, Wells, Hunter and Affolder won on Friday with an 8:00.36 effort.
Although LV didn’t score in the field, they did earn points in non-distance events. Akere Simms placed fourth in the 500 with a time of 1:07.87, and the 1600 relay quartet of Affolder, Windle, Simms and Essa Elhaji placed third in 3:31.55, a time which could have been better, according to Coach Hunter.
“Essa actually almost went down at the exchange, put his hand down on the track and bounced back up. It definitely cost us some time, so we were happy to run a season's best (entry time of 3:33) given that.”
There was another reason for the weekend to be a family celebration for the Hunters. While Joan and Marc were coaching and Jacob was running in Salem, 460 miles away, at Staten Island’s Ocean Breeze track facility, the oldest Hunter son, Drew, won the Toyota USATF two-mile national championship. Hunter’s feat was more amazing because as he told NBC Sports’ Louis Johnson, “I didn’t have a seed time, so I had to run in the first heat.” His winning time of 8:25.29 in the “B’ race was good enough to earn the title as the “A” entries refused to push the pace and Eric Avila ended up winning in 8:32.41.
“It was a good weekend for our family,” said Joan Hunter on Monday.
