Boys Cross Country: Red Raiders have outstanding season; Gagne MVP

The Wauwatosa East boys cross country team celebrated one of the most successful seasons in more than two decades at the annual awards banquet on Nov.10.

The 2011 Red Raiders were team champions of the Highlander, Rocket and Cedarburg Invitationals and runner-up in the Angel Invite and sectional meet.

Most notable was the second-place finish at the WIAA sectional meet qualifying the Raiders for the WIAA state meet for the first time in 21 years.

The Raiders were led by six retuning letter winners - senior Tom Acompanado, juniors Dan Gagne, Steffen Uhrich, R.J. Salmon and Jack Lockhart and sophomore Jonah Meidl.

A strong competitive spirit fueled the team to race among the top teams in the state and maintain a top-10 state ranking for much of the season.

"One of the keys to the success was the solid leadership from senior captain Joe Glowacki," coach Tom Rehberger said. "He led one of the most successful summer running programs in recent years and made major contributions to building a team atmosphere."

This year's letter award winners include sophomores Meidl, Cavy Brennan, Jack Mouradian, Jake Watson and Tanner Rutkowski; juniors Gagne, Uhrich, Salmon, Lockhart and Clayton Ristow and seniors Acompanado and Glowacki.

The Red Raiders had several special award winners at their banquet.

Tosa East's Most Valuable Runner went to Gagne, who led the team in all nine varsity races accumulating a total of 90 varsity points.

He was the individual champion of the Highlander and Cedarburg races and runner-up in the Rocket, Angel and Viking races along with a runner-up finish in the Greater Metro Conference meet. In his second appearance in the WIAA state meet he placed 24th overall.

Gagne ran a personal record time of 15 minutes, 48 seconds this year which ranks him second on the All-Time PR list at Tosa East.

The Most Improved Runner award was shared by Meidl and Salmon.

"Jonah consistently ran as the fourth runner for most of the season and made major contributions in the conference and state meets where he was the third runner," Rehberger said. "Jonah earned 59 varsity points and improved his PR 46 seconds to 16:48.

"R.J. ran consistently as the third runner for most of the season and made significant contributions in the conference, sectional and state meets where he finished as the second runner on the team."

Salmon placed sixth overall in the conference meet earning first-team all-conference status. He earned 65 varsity points and improved his PR time by 48 seconds to 16:40 which places him tied for 37th on the All-Time PR list for Tosa East.

The Special Achievement Award-Red Hat went to Uhrich, Mouradian and Watson.

The tradition of the Red Hat award began in the 1970's during the coaching tenure of Joe Vitrano. Red hats were given to a Tosa East runner whose dedication, perseverance and determination allowed them to succeed.

"Steffen, Jack and Jake consistently demonstrate the character and qualities of the best in Tosa East Cross Country running tradition," Rehberger said.

The Scholar Athlete Award is given by the GMC for seniors who earned a varsity letter and maintained a cumulative grade point average above 3.5.

This year two student-athletes qualified for this award - Acompanado and Glowacki.

The other runner's PR's for the season were Uhrich (16:27), Meidl (16:48), Mouradian (17:08), Acompanado (17:37) and Brennan (18:20).

"I told them don't completely forget this day (going to state)," Rehberger said. "We will need to draw on this next year and do all the little things to stay healthy and compete well at the end of the season."