Vicenza's Nicole McCollaum gets a piggy-back ride from her 12-year-old sister, Rachel McCollaum, after finishing the DODDS-Europe cross country championship race at the Rolling Hills Golf Club in Baumholder, Germany, Saturday, Oct. 25, 2014. (Joshua L. DeMotts/Stars and Stripes)
Vicenza's Nicole McCollaum gets a piggy-back ride from her 12-year-old sister, Rachel McCollaum, after finishing the DODDS-Europe cross country championship race at the Rolling Hills Golf Club in Baumholder, Germany, Saturday, Oct. 25, 2014. (Joshua L. DeMotts/Stars and Stripes)
Patch's Kelleen McGuinness gets a hug from her mom, Lisa McGuinness, after finishing second at the DODDS-Europe cross country championship race at the Rolling Hills Golf Club in Baumholder, Germany, Saturday, Oct. 25, 2014. (Joshua L. DeMotts/Stars and Stripes)
Competitors finish the DODDS-Europe cross country championship race at the Rolling Hills Golf Club in Baumholder, Germany, Saturday, Oct. 25, 2014. (Joshua L. DeMotts/Stars and Stripes)
Kaiserslautern's Hannah Grebos sprints across the finish line just ahead of Frankfurt International's Elena Verdera in the DODDS-Europe cross country championship race at the Rolling Hills Golf Club in Baumholder, Germany, Saturday, Oct. 25, 2014. (Joshua L. DeMotts/Stars and Stripes)
Patch's Julia Lockridge crosses the finish line to win the DODDS-Europe cross country championship race at the Rolling Hills Golf Club in Baumholder, Germany, Saturday, Oct. 25, 2014. (Joshua L. DeMotts/Stars and Stripes)
Patch's Julia Lockridge leads the DODDS-Europe cross country championship race into the final stretch at the Rolling Hills Golf Club in Baumholder, Germany, Saturday, Oct. 25, 2014. (Joshua L. DeMotts/Stars and Stripes)
Racers cruise down a long hill at the Rolling Hills Golf Club in Baumholder, Germany during the DODDS-Europe cross country championship race, Saturday, Oct. 25, 2014. (Joshua L. DeMotts/Stars and Stripes)
Racers jog on the Rolling Hills Golf Club in Baumholder, Germany during the DODDS-Europe cross country championship race, Saturday, Oct. 25, 2014. (Joshua L. DeMotts/Stars and Stripes)
A pack of runners on the first lap of the DODDS-Europe cross country championship race at the Rolling Hills Golf Club in Baumholder, Germany, Saturday, Oct. 25, 2014. (Joshua L. DeMotts/Stars and Stripes)
Competitors round a turn on the first lap of the DODDS-Europe cross country championship race at the Rolling Hills Golf Club in Baumholder, Germany, Saturday, Oct. 25, 2014. (Joshua L. DeMotts/Stars and Stripes)
Racers sprint at the start of the DODDS-Europe cross country championship race at the Rolling Hills Golf Club in Baumholder, Germany, Saturday, Oct. 25, 2014. (Joshua L. DeMotts/Stars and Stripes)
Racers sprint at the start of the DODDS-Europe cross country championship race at the Rolling Hills Golf Club in Baumholder, Germany, Saturday, Oct. 25, 2014. (Joshua L. DeMotts/Stars and Stripes)
Competitors finish the DODDS-Europe cross country championship race at the Rolling Hills Golf Club in Baumholder, Germany, Saturday, Oct. 25, 2014. (Joshua L. DeMotts/Stars and Stripes)
Patch's Alexander Donnelly came in third at the DODDS-Europe cross country championship race at the Rolling Hills Golf Club in Baumholder, Germany, Saturday, Oct. 25, 2014. (Joshua L. DeMotts/Stars and Stripes)
Wiesbaden's Ryan Parker crosses the line for second place at the DODDS-Europe cross country championship race at the Rolling Hills Golf Club in Baumholder, Germany, Saturday, Oct. 25, 2014. (Joshua L. DeMotts/Stars and Stripes)
Patch's Mitchell Bailey crosses the finish line to win his second consecutive DODDS-Europe cross country championship race at the Rolling Hills Golf Club in Baumholder, Germany, Saturday, Oct. 25, 2014. (Joshua L. DeMotts/Stars and Stripes)
Racers cruise down a long hill at the Rolling Hills Golf Club in Baumholder, Germany during the DODDS-Europe cross country championship race, Saturday, Oct. 25, 2014. (Joshua L. DeMotts/Stars and Stripes)
Patch's Mitchell Bailey leads the DODDS-Europe cross country championship race just ahead of Wiesbaden's Ryan Parker at the Rolling Hills Golf Club in Baumholder, Germany, Saturday, Oct. 25, 2014. (Joshua L. DeMotts/Stars and Stripes)
Racers sprint at the start of the DODDS-Europe cross country championship race at the Rolling Hills Golf Club in Baumholder, Germany, Saturday, Oct. 25, 2014. (Joshua L. DeMotts/Stars and Stripes)
Spectators line up to watch the start of the DODDS-Europe cross country championship race at the Rolling Hills Golf Club in Baumholder, Germany, Saturday, Oct. 25, 2014. (Joshua L. DeMotts/Stars and Stripes)
Racers warm up before the start of the DODDS-Europe cross country championship race at the Rolling Hills Golf Club in Baumholder, Germany, Saturday, Oct. 25, 2014. (Joshua L. DeMotts/Stars and Stripes)
Spectators line up to watch the start of the DODDS-Europe cross country championship race at the Rolling Hills Golf Club in Baumholder, Germany, Saturday, Oct. 25, 2014. (Joshua L. DeMotts/Stars and Stripes)
BAUMHOLDER, Germany – The yellow jerseys came in fast and furious.
Doing the math - adding up team points after it was over - would just make it official.
Anybody watching the finish chute at the 2014 DODDS-Europe cross country championships Saturday saw domination by one team in yellow: Patch.
Both the Patch boys’ and girls’ squads won the Division I team titles by placing four runners in the top 10; their fifth runner – the top five runners on a team score – was No. 15, for both the boys and girls, with about 100 runners toeing the line in each race.
The effort from Patch left little room for anyone else to make a run at the title. On the girls’ side, Ramstein was second in Division I, while Ramstein and Wiesbaden each scored 67 points behind Patch in the boys race, with the tiebreaker going to Wiesbaden.
Patch’s goals were to take “first, first, first and first,” Coach Philip Bailey said, referring to the individual and team titles for both boys and girls. “Since this is our last year as Patch, we figured we’ll leave it with a bang.”
A new Patch high school is scheduled to open next school year with a new name.
Bailey and fellow Patch coach, Blake Little, said the Panthers outdid themselves and turned in a true team effort.
“A lot of people say cross country is an individual sport but I think day in and day out, if you don’t have the camaraderie and the teamwork to work together,” it’s harder to succeed as an individual, Little said.
Patch had no trouble succeeding on the individual level. Patch senior Mitchell Bailey – the coach’s son - defended his 2013 crown to take the boys’ 3.1-mile race in 16 minutes 53.35 seconds. Wiesbaden senior Ryan Parker was second. The two runners had near identical regular-season times entering Saturday’s finals but they hadn’t dueled all year.
Parker gave it his best shot. Just past the half-way point on Baumholder’s Rolling Hills Golf Course, he charged ahead of Bailey on a downhill, he recounted after the race. He was trying to “break him” he said, “so he would give up.” But Bailey stayed with Parker on the next uphill and “as we came into the woods, he passed me,” Parker said. “I just felt my chest get really tight. He just gained distance from there.”
Parker, who was fourth as a junior, crossed the line second in 17:07.04.
After being last year’s surprise winner, moving up from a seventh-place finish as a sophomore, Bailey said he felt the weight of carrying high expectations into the final meet of his high school career.
“There was a lot more pressure this year,” he said. “It would be OK if someone from my own team beat me but … I have to defend the title for the school.”
Winning a second time, however, is just as sweet. It feels “great,” Bailey said. “I’m really happy. I’m going to go home and celebrate.”
On the girls’ side, a new but familiar champion was crowned. Patch’s Julia Lockridge, a middle-distance track and field standout for the Panthers in the spring, earned her first cross country title with a winning time of 19:53.82.
Though it was her first cross country season since her freshman year, the senior said she felt pressure to keep the Patch streak alive, alluding to Patch’s string of distance championships. Former Panther Bailey Sessions earned three-straight European crowns before graduating last year. Two other Patch runners won the two years before that.
Lockridge credited her parents, Beth and Darrell Lockridge, for their support.
“That’s who’s really been there for me,” she said. They’re my “biggest fans. No. 1.”
Finishing second in the girls’ race was another Patch runner, senior Kelleen McGuinness. She ran 20:07.35 to finish one place better than last year.
After pulling ahead of Ramstein’s Madison Morse on the course’s second loop, she ran scared, giving it all she had to stay ahead of Morse, last year’s runner-up. “I heard 6-yard lead,” McGuinness said. “I tried to maintain that because I was frightened.”
“I felt great,” she added. “It’s my senior year. I was so excited to be running.”
Morse ended up fourth, behind third-place finisher Michelle Sanchez from Vilseck.
The freshman turned in her best time of the season, she said, shaving off nearly three minutes from her average times earlier this fall.
Sanchez hung on despite the tough course.
“I was really, really tired because of those hills,” she said.
