The Northwest boys cross country team had a difficult start to the season. They had been practicing Monday through Thursday all throughout the summer, meeting at 5:45 am to start their summer conditioning. Near the end of the summer, they had traveled to Appalachian State University to attend cross country camp. The boys had been ranked 4th in the state for preseason ranking, which was the highest ranking they had ever received in school history for the preseason. But, they fell to the various teams that came to the cross country camp and ended up finishing in 5th place at the 2 mile camp race. “It was a wake-up call. We had been so confident that no other team could be as prepared as we were, especially with all the summer conditioning we had done” said senior Rory O’Neill following their loss at the camp race. The  boys then knew they had to head into the season knowing that they indeed could be beaten and had to work hard to make sure that they didn’t.

They had went into the first meet of the season with the desire to win. Unfortunately, they fell short to Liberty, a 2015 state champion tea, and took second at the Brunswick invitational. The boys then knew that they had to work even harder in order to have a successful season. They went on to crush Clarksburg in their dual meet as well as winning every other divisional championship meet from then on forward to become 2016 divisional champions. But they could not stop there, they had to try and win counties. Northwest boys had not won counties since 2002 and the boys were hoping to break that 14 year dry spell.

Before heading into the County Championship meet, the boys had went to Manhattan, NY for one of the largest cross country meets on the east coast. They shot for first, but again they had not met their goal and ended up finishing 4th in their race. They took this bad race to learn about their mistakes and what they need to work on in order to do better at counties. Come counties, the boys were pumped. “We really shouldn’t listen to the polls because in the end only the real results matter, but some polls had us getting beat buy Churchill and Richard Montgomery while other polls had us winning the whole meet. This made us want to prove those who had us losing wrong” said senior Komlan Attiogbe. The boys ended up winning the county title for the first time in 14 years. They were also the first team to win a county title without a single runner in the top 10. The 20 second spread between the 1st and 5th runner played a huge role in their capture of the county title that proved to be so allusive all those years.

They had headed into the Regional Championships with their heads held high being so that they were County Champions and they were going to race just about the same teams they raced in counties. This could have been a factor to their downfall, for the boys had finished 3rd at regionals when they had been shooting for first. On the brighter side of things, the top 7 team finishers would qualify to go to the State Championship meet at Hereford High School. They headed into the meet knowing that even though they had beaten all the teams in the region at counties, they had fallen to two of those team, Richard Montgomery and Churchill, and Regionals. The boys had a satisfactory performance at the state meet, lead by junior Chase Osborne who finished in the top 25 and receiving a medal. Although, they were they had the highest finish of any Montgomery County team, beating out Richard Montgomery and Churchill High School.