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Winfield Mile, 1 Jan 2006

Diven, Stick Capture 2006 Winfield Mile

They came from seemingly everywhere--six runners and a coach from Chambersburg, Pa., from Waldorf, Md., from Virginia, and a host from Liberty High School--but in the end, they all finished behind South Carroll grad Philip Diven and the incomparable Sherry Stick, who continued her streak as the only female winner of this race in the current century.

As the point-to-point race started on the west side of beautiful downtown Winfield, a clump of high school and college burners led the field through the first quarter mile to the long downhill leading to the Winfield Fire Hall. It was in this stretch that Philip Diven, a recent graduate of South Carroll High School who has continued to run at Howard Community College, began to assert himself. In the final stretch from the Fire Hall to the finish line in front of South Carroll High School, he pulled away to a three second win over David Eubanks, with former Francis Scott Key runner Ron Shriver close behind.

Chris Monheim, the coach from Chambersburg, was the first "thirtysomething" runner, finishing in sixth place. Bob Paczynski finished second in his family but first in the over forty crowd in fourteenth place, with Peter Blank finishing in twenty-eighth place as the fastest of the fifties and Roger Kilgore finishing in thirty-seventh place as the speediest of the sixties. Close behind him was Marshall Demaree in fortieth place as the leader in the ten and under category.

Stick, who has now won this race six years in a row (the twenty-first century began in 2001) tied her course record which she set last year, which of course broke the record she had set in 2004, which broke the record, but you get the point. In comparison to past years, she did have competition this year, as Sarah Morrison, pony tail flying in the breeze, gave her a stiff battle until Stick prevailed with a two second margin. It was Stick's second win in two days, as she finished first in a race run in Baltimore on Saturday honoring Dave Cooley's twenty years plus career of race directing.

Mary Grupenhoff finished seventh as the first of the thirty year crowd, Marsha Demaree finished forty-ninth as the first of the forties, Chris Reese finished seventy-third as the first of the fifties, Dee Nelson finished sixty-second as the first of the sixties, and Anna Hohl finished fifty-third as the first of the ten and unders.

In a new category this year, Melissa Riebau outpushed Lynn Kohr and Beth Weisenborn to finish first in the baby jogger class, in what could be described (tongue in cheek) as a "blanket finish."

In one of the modern miracles of our time, the number of paid entrants, 103, exactly matched the number of cards both handed to finishers and returned to the finish line crew. Whether all times, names, and places exactly match is of course an entirely different question.

Young runners at the Winfield Mile, 2006.