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Realizing a dream he had been working toward for four years, Parry McCluer High School senior Kovyk Chandler won his first individual state cross country championship to lead the Fighting Blues to the team title at the Class 1 state meet on Saturday afternoon at Green Hill Park in Salem.
This was the PM boys’ third state cross country title in five years. The Blues won in 2019 and in the spring 2021 season, delayed from the fall 2020 due to COVID-19, when Chandler was PM’s fourth runner as a freshman and finished 16th overall.
“I’m happy,” said PM head coach Chris Poluikis. “I gave us probably a 20 percent chance of winning the team title.”
Chandler pulled away from the other top runners in the second half of the race to win, finishing the flat 5-kilometer course in a time of 15 minutes, 54.1 seconds. Last year, Chandler placed second at the state meet, and he finished third as a sophomore.
Following Chandler closely in second place was his younger brother, Kebryl, a freshman who passed two runners in the final sprint to finish in a 15:59.1, a personal record (PR) by about 20 seconds. Grundy’s Keyston Hartford placed third of 99 harriers in 16:06.2.
Before the race, which took place under sunny weather with temperatures in the upper 50s, Poluikis noticed that Kovyk was a little nervous, and that made him nervous. “It did because Kovyk has struggled in the past in cross country to get what he wants,” said Poluikis. “In track, he always had his success. Cross country, he’s more inconsistent. I was over there, and I was kind of praying to myself. In all honesty, I was like, I don’t care about the team title, just let Kovyk win, because I just knew how much it meant to him after all these years. It was just an important title that I wanted him to win. I think he felt those nerves from the past.”
Reflecting on the victory, Kovyk said he was pleased to achieve it after coming close the last two years. He started out fast, running the first 400 meters in 65 seconds and the first mile in 4:57. About halfway through the first half of the race, Kovyk took the lead and started extending it, running the second mile in 5:07 and the third mile in 5:12. He glanced back a couple of times late in the race, but he kept increasing his lead as he approached the finish line.
Kovyk added that he was “really proud” of Kebryl for how he ran.
Reflecting on his race, Kebryl said, “I’m happy with it. I don’t think it could’ve gone much better.”
Poluikis said the two Chandler brothers have different running styles, but both have been successful. “Kovyk has a phenomenal kick,” said Poluikis. “It’s seen more in track. Their running form is very different. They’re very different kinds of guys. They have both different strengths.”
While Kovyk is good at grinding it out in races, Poluikis said Kebryl is “good at kicking, but he’s also good at kicking off a fast pace. You can’t really run his kick off. That’s how you deal with a kicker; you run his kick off. But it doesn’t seem like you can do that to Kebryl. Once I saw him take that [final] turn, I was like, I’ll bet my paycheck he’s gonna get those two guys.”
Poluikis looks forward to Kebryl’s development over the coming years. “I’ve told people before, he has the maturity of a 30-year-old,” said Poluikis. “I have a lot of confidence in him. He’s been running for a while. We were hoping he would get second, but he’s absolutely phenomenal. I’m always proud to be his coach, the way he runs. Like last year in eighth grade, just the way he just rips people’s heads off at the last parts of races. It’s his style. I love it.”
Also earning all-state honors for the Blues by placing in the top 15 were sophomores Logan Wheelock and Josh Cooper. Wheelock finished seventh in 16:44.6, a PR time that was nearly two-and-a-half minutes faster than his time on the course last year. Cooper came in 12th in 17:30.4, nearly two minutes faster than his time last year. Completing the scoring for PM was freshman Sam Carpenter, who finished 52nd in 19:11.1 in his first state meet appearance. Also racing for the Blues and making his first state meet was sophomore Caden Mason (99th, 27:48.8).
The top five runners for each team count in team scoring, and Kovyk credited Wheelock, Cooper and Carpenter for sealing the team win. “If I ran really bad, we lost a couple of points,” he said. “If they ran really bad, we lost like 20 points.”
In the team standings, the Blues scored 61 points to beat runnerup Mathews, which placed second of 12 teams with 79 points. Altavista placed third with 119 points, while Eastern Montgomery (122) and Auburn (136) rounded out the top five.
Poluikis said that Wheelock and Kebryl Chandler “probably had the best races of the day.”
The PM coach said that Wheelock, who also placed seventh at the Pioneer District and Region 1C meets, which the PM boys won, had “an unbelievable race.”
Going into the race, Wheelock knew that a lot of the pressure was on him, Cooper and Carpenter. “It was up to us to make the big differences,” said Wheelock. “A lot of nerves and a lot of stress across the board.”
Reviewing his career, Kovyk said that Poluikis told him that “it’s like a book,” winning the team title as a freshman and as a senior, with his individual title to add to it. One of the PM fans watching the race was Trevor Tomlin, a 2021 PM graduate who was the state champion in the spring of 2021 to lead the Blues to the team title.
The Blues had one runner in the girls’ race, sophomore Kyra Lee, who placed 21st of 96 harriers in 22:06.9, about 53 seconds faster than her time on the course at last year’s state meet, when she finished 23rd.
Lee said her plan going into the race was “to go out fast and stay out fast.”
She got a stomach cramp about a mile into the race, affecting her time. “She still ran close to her PR, but I could tell something was wrong,” said Poluikis, noting that she’d run a fast race at the Region 1C meet to qualify for the state meet.
Galileo’s Carol-Anne Garrettt won the girls’ race in 19:03.7, leading Galileo to the team title with 67 points. George Wythe (85) placed second of 11 teams, Mathews (111) finished third, and Patrick Henry-Glade Spring (140) and Auburn (144) rounded out the top five.
PM will graduate just two runners, Kovyk Chandler from the boys’ team and Jasmine De Souza from the girls’ team. Many of the Blues plan to run indoor and outdoor track.
