A Brief History of Northwood Cross Country

Northwood had a successful distance program prior to the school's shuttering in 1985. The girls team won three of the first four cross country state titles as soon as Maryland adopted girls cross country as an official sport in 1975. The boys team finished second in the state in 1962 and regularly contended as a top ten team in Montgomery County through the early 1980's. The Indian boys' peak at the XC county championship was third place in 1980. The Northwood boys team was known for their sprint teams which were dominant at times during the early 80's.

Northwood High School re-opened in 2004 after the physical building had been used for miscellaneous MCPS space needs for twenty years. With only freshman students, nobody expected the newly named Northwood Gladiators to contend in varsity athletics at first, but sadly they did not field a cross country team at all in 2004 and 2005.

Giovanni Reumante was one of a handful of freshmen students who joined the Northwood track team in the winter of 2005, and as a junior he joined Northwood's revived, albeit incomplete cross country team in 2006. Invisible at first, Northwood track grew to have a presence on the state level through the efforts of head coach Mark Brown, athletes Reumante, Derrick Powell, Keith Hudson, Le'Quisha Parker and others, but the cross country program was unable to escape the lower divisions and the double-digit county rankings for a long time.

Reumante was part of the first graduating Gladiator class in 2008. He departed for a few years, but returned as an assistant track coach in 2012 and assistant cross country coach alongside head coach Mike Sauter in 2013. Between 2004 and 2015, Northwood moved from the 1A classification to the 4A classification, which made it increasingly difficult to compete at the state level.

A Seed Planted

In 2016, Sauter stepped down, and Reumante stepped up as head cross country coach. Northwood's girls team finished last in the 4A West region and the boys finished 12th out of 13 team, but a seed was planted. Young runners, skinny freshmen and sophomores, dismissed by the powerhouse programs as region-fillers, invisible as Reumante's teams had been in 2005, showed promise, if only they could stick together and trust their new coach.

"They believed in each other," said Reumante. "I think that's where it starts...they put in the work in the summer. They put in a lot of miles and they just trusted where they are."

In 2017, the Northwood boys improved to 6th in the county, 5th in the region, and 13th in the state. In 2018, the Northwood boys won the school's first county title with 64 points, the lowest winning boys score by any team since 2010. The Northwood girls team unexpectedly won its first Consortia Championship title and finished 7th at the county championship, the highest finish by the Northwood girls since 1981.

The Gladiator boys have aspirations far beyond the county championship.

"They all had this common goal of winning counties, regions, states, and possibly qualifying for NXN," said Reumante. "It sounds farfetched for a team who came in last year who couldn't even win the Montgomery County title, but...today, they don't even believe they had their best race. That shows a lot that they are still learning, but they are still on the right track."

Saturday's victory started at the top with the duo of Obsaa Feda and Eldad Mulugeta, who became just the second male teammates to sweep the top two spots at the county championship in meet history. Baraka Sila, who ran with the team during the low point in 2016, finished 16th overall. Lamar Wilson and Mulisa Regassa rounded out the top five Gladiators in 22nd and 23rd place.

Adapting to the Elements

Two weeks prior, Feda said that he wanted to aim for sub-15 at the county championship just to see how it felt. That strategy changed a little bit when the course was drenched with rain for over 24 hours. The normally speedy county course was spotted with slick, muddy patches that were difficult for runners to navigate.

"It was so muddy," said Feda after crossing the line in 16:00, the 24th fastest time in course history.

He and every runner at Bohrer Park was covered in mud from head to spikes.

"The footing was really bad everywhere, especially in the back side. I was slipping every time."

Feda was happy to let his teammate lead for more than half the race. The two were able to separate from all but Wootton's John Riker in the first five minutes of the race. Riker later paid the price for going with them since he eventually finished 13th.

At about a mile and a half into the race, Feda said that his teammate gave him the lead. He said that he was tired because he was working harder than expected through the mud. Fortunately, in stark contrast to the 2017 county championship which saw nine guys finish between 15:32 and 15:51, he did not need to worry about any runners around him in the final half mile.

Mulugeta said that he did not give the lead to his teammate. Rather, he tied up in the second half and altered his goal to make sure no other runners passed him. He powered through to the end to hold off the hard-charging Ezra Dessie from Paint Branch High School, 16:23 to 16:27.

"The first mile was pretty good," said Mulugeta. "And then after that, I just started tying up. Our goal was to go out super-fast and then [Feda] can help me out. Today, I couldn't do that, so I just [tempered] the pace. He just opened it up [in the second half]."

Now, it's on to bigger and better things for Feda, Mulugeta, and the rest, but for Coach Reumante, who literally resurrected Northwood's running program from non-existence in 2005, the significance of rising to the top of Montgomery County was not lost.

"I'm excited, very excited," said Reumante just after holding the first place trophy for the first time. "...it means a lot just because in the state, Montgomery County is usually highly represented. Most of the top-5, top-10 teams come from Montgomery County, so for us to come out here and prove that we are the best team in Montgomery County, that says a lot for us moving forward."



Photo #1: 1978 Northwood Girls XC Team at the Woodward Relays, Photo by Monica Mintz, Montgomery Journal. Used with Permission.
Photo #2: 2007 Montgomery County Championship. Bib #820 Giovanni Reumante's 35th place finish was highest by a Northwood runner in at least 23 years.
Photo #3: 2018 Northwood boys at start of county championship
Photo #4: 2018 Obsaa Feda crossing finish line first in 16:00
Photo #5: Northwood boys posed for photo after winning school's first county title