McKeesport, PA - The North Catholic cross country team traveled to White Oak Park in McKeesport on Saturday to compete in the 20th Annual Red, White & Blue Classic, one of the largest and most competitive invitational meets in Western PA. More than 1900 runners participated across all the divisions, and the girls' varsity team came away with a 4th place finish (114 points) out of 21 teams in the AA race while the boys' varsity team tied Uniontown for 4th out of 24 teams. However, Uniontown won the tiebreaker. Beaver won the girl's race with a low score of 65 points, and the boys were only 15 points behind 1st place Hampton with a low score of 121 points.

The Trojans had 5 individual top 25 medalists. Julia Zalenski (Sr.), Grace Lazzara (Jr.) and Madeline Meeuf (Fr.) earned 7th, 13th and 16th place medals respectively, and Madeline recorded the fastest time of any freshman in the varsity race with a time of 20:33 for the 5K course. Julia was the only NC girl to break the 20:00 barrier with a time of 19:50. Junior Alex Gongas (39th) and sophomore Keelin Schessler (47th) rounded out the scoring for the girl's team. In the boys' varsity race, seniors Owen Schessler (13th) and Alex Urling (16th) led the way and broke the 17:00 barrier with times of 16:35 and 16:48. Seniors Joe Harmanos (29th) and Rigel Weakland (32nd) and junior Sam West (46th) rounded out the scoring for the boys.