Coming off an unbeaten season in 2022, Parkland’s boys cross country team enters this fall with the bulk of last year’s District line up still in tact. The Trojans graduated just three runners from last year’s District 11 championship line up in Liam McGuigan, Brady Hoffman and Praveen Sureshkumar, along with Samuel Tomko, who was part of the team’s EPC Championship lineup.

Parkland returns a district champ, along with two other top-10 finishers from last year’s district meet.

Senior Paul Abeln was a runner-up at leagues last season before taking the individual district title a week later. Teammates and senior classmates Ethan Willard (6th at districts, 4th at leagues in ‘23), Jake Barnes (9th at districts, 10th at leagues) and Tyler Rothrock (21st at districts, 24th at leagues) return to a team that is coming off the best postseason in school history

“Our boys are defending EPC regular season, EPC championship and District 11 champions,” said fifth-year head coach Stephen Ott. “We finished 8th in the PIAA state race last year, which was the highest team finish in school history. Four of our top seven runners are back this year including Paul, the individual District 11 champion.

“We know that we have a tough regular season to get through before the important championship races in the postseason. The goal is to defend our titles and improve our finish in the state race. Nothing is taken for granted, and we need to work hard in order to accomplish that.”

Ott said there will be some newcomers to the line up that will help the team in its quest to make history a second year in a row. He’s looking forward to the Sept. 2 Northampton Invitational where his team will compete against a strong field in its first official competition of the season.

“We will get a real feel of both our teams in this exceptional race,” he said.