from the North Hills News Record, Friday, October 30, 1998

Runners earn titles at Slippery Rock

Hampton's Stacey Vidt wins the WPIAL girls title at Friday's finals at Slippery Rock. The victory qualifies her for the WPIAL championships. Meanwhile, the North Allegheny girls and the Shady Side boys teams also win their divisions.

Shady Side repeats as champion

Teams wins on course and in classroom


By John Grupp
Staff Writer


SLIPPERY ROCK: The Shady Side Academy boys cross country team has the smarts and the skills.
Shady Side Academy, sprinkled with straight-A students and applications to Ivy League schools, won its second consecutive WPIAL class AA team championship Thursday at Slippery Rock University.
"We're good jugglers," said senior André Moura, who carries a 4.13 grade-point average, and finished 7th overall [sic: actually he was 8th] with a time of 17:35.
"WE can juggle the athletics and the academics."
Moura said that all of the runners on the team carry "around a 4.0" grade-point average. [sic: Actually me, Bell, Brandon and Lenny have no comment on that subject.]
One student scored a 1,600 on his Scholastic Assessment Test. [That is true] Two of them have applied at Harvard. [True again]
Another is looking at Princeton, [Applied early decision] and another at the Air Force Academy. [Actually two people]
"They probably have one of hte highest grade-point averages of any team they've ever seen at the school in any sport," said head coach Bill McConnel.
They also excel on the race course. Shady Side Academy had five of the top 28 runners to accumulate 67 points and outrun second place Quaker Valley (105) for its third title since joining the WPIAL five years ago.
Junior Andrew Bell was runner-up behind Scott Munro of South Park with a time of 16 minutes, 59 seconds.
Moura, Tung (12th), Charlie Cheever (27th) and Leonard Wholey (28th) rounded out the top five for Shady Side Academy. [Actually Aaron Magid got 20th place, so I was 5th, Len was 6th] Matt Hall placed 35th despite twisting his ankle during pre-race warmups.
"We knew that if we ran the way we expected, we would be able to defend our title," Tung said.
Sean Gallagher of Mars and Matt Cantrell of North Catholic will join the Shady Side Academy boys team at the PIAA Class AA cross country championships Nov. 7 at Penn State.
Gallagher placed 10th overall with a time of 17:45 and Cantrell was 14th in 17:49. "I wanted to go out fast and pick up my pace during th emiddle, that way no once could pass me at the end," Gallagher said. "People have been passing me at the end, and I didn't like that."
No Class AA girls from the North Hills area advanced to the state championships.
"We all did our best, which is what we always try to do," said North Catholic junior Lindsay Kostorick, who placed 60th overall with a time of 23:41.
Shady Side Academy is the best Class AA team in Western Pennsylvania. It went undefeated in dual meets this season and two weeks ago became the first team to win four consecutive Interscholastic Prep School League titles. [sic: Actually, its Interstate Preparatory School League. No one can get this right. They either mess up the I or the P -- it's really kind of weird.] "They have a considerable amount of drive and they work very hard," McConnel said.
"They pay the price on both ends."