A sunny Saturday morning at Panorama Farms brought Virginia cross country out for the Panorama Invitational, which marked the Cavaliers’ final regular season meet before the ACC Cross Country Championships next month. On their home turf, the Cavaliers battled several in-conference and out-of-conference opponents, finding success as the women’s team picked up first place and the men finished second.
The race kicked off with the men’s 8k at 8:45 a.m., with the temperature at 36 degrees — a little cold, even for a cross country meet. 197 runners competed in the race, and at the 2k point, juniors Gary Martin, Will Anthony and Justin Wachtel were in a tight pack at the front with a few Wake Forest runners.
By the 3k mark, the runners were all still very close together, with senior Wes Porter and junior Billy Atkinson moving up a few places into ninth and 10th. Martin held a strong first place, and Wake Forest senior Luke Tewalt moved up into second as the race crossed the 5k mark.
With 1k to go, Martin created a decisive lead, opening a couple-second gap between him and Tewalt that only increased as the finish line loomed. In a time of 22:58.9, Martin clearly had positioned himself as the winner with the second place finisher 14 seconds behind. The race was a season’s best and almost a minute faster than Martin’s last race.
Anthony finished in fourth in 23:19.6. Senior Nathan Mountain, appearing in his first race of the 2024 cross country campaign, made a significant climb during the last part of the race with a very solid seventh-place finish in 23:29.4.
The 17th through 20th slots were all Virginia — Porter, senior Jack Eliason, junior Andrew Jones and graduate student Scott Sikorski finished consecutively and all within four seconds of each other. Senior Jacob Hunter finished in 22nd with a time of 23:54.1 with Atkinson and Wachtel close behind him in 24th and 25th place, respectively.
Freshman Adam Balewicz finished in 30th place in 24:02.9, and then came sophomore Richard Moreno in 46th in 24:18.4. Sophomore Conor Murphy clocked 24:31.5 to place 63rd, sophomore James Donahue grabbed 78th and freshman Cayden Dyer placed 120th.
Overall, the men’s team placed second with 47 points, behind only a strong Wake Forest team who posted 38 points. The Cavaliers managed to beat out Virginia Tech, who came in 3rd. Vin Lananna, director of track and field and cross country, was pleased with his team’s effort in its last tune-up before the postseason.
“Our first three guys were fabulous between Gary [Martin], Will Anthony and Nate Mountain with Nate coming back for his first cross country race of the season,” Lananna said. “We came up a little bit short, but we are getting better and now we start going to the championships so it gets serious now.”
The women’s race started at 9:30 a.m. and featured slightly warmer weather for the 134-runner field. The event began and ended with Virginia dominance. By the 2k mark, junior Jenny Schilling and senior Sophie Atkinson were at the front with sophomores Tatum David and Cate DeSousa and senior Camryn Menninger close behind.
At the 3k mark, this pattern continued, and freshman Sarah Peer climbed up a few places into ninth place. At the 5k point, Schilling had pulled away from everyone else, and Menninger and David pulled into fourth and fifth with DeSousa in eighth.
Schilling broadened her lead in the last 1k, finishing in first with a time of 20:09.7. 18.2 seconds later, Atkinson finished in second. An unattached runner placed third, then came David in fourth in 20:38.2 and Menninger in fifth with a time of 20:44.5. DeSousa placed eighth and Peer finished ninth.
Senior Luci Ilnicki-Lambert finished 21st, then freshman Tatum Olesen came in 34th. A couple places behind her was junior Katie Dorsey in 38th and sophomore Clark Stewart in 56th.
The women’s team crushed its competition, taking first place with just 17 points. The runner-up Virginia Tech finished with 70 points.
“On the women’s side, a dominant performance with really good team running,” Lananna said. “Everyone knew what she had to do and went out and did it. It was an almost perfect race for the women.”
Both the women’s and men’s teams had visible confidence in returning to their home course, and Schilling and Martin only cemented this further with their pair of first place finishes. Both Virginia squads look like they will have a fair shot at the conference title when the ACC Cross Country Championships take place Nov. 1 in Cary, N.C. The starting time for the two races has not been determined.
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