Caden Leonard Gives His Team 1 Point, Leads Carroll Back To NXN For Record 16th Time; Flower Mound Girls Remain On Top Of South Region; Lilly Beshears Beats Elizabeth Leachman

By Keenan Gray of DyeStat

RESULTS | VIDEOS

Led by an individual win from Caden Leonard, Carroll XC clinched its 16th trip to Nike Cross Nationals, winning Nike Cross Regional South on Saturday in The Woodlands, Texas. 

A year after finishing third to both Joseph Bariola and Adam Burlison by three seconds, Leonard came out on the winning end to capture his first regional title, covering the Bear Branch Park 5-kilometer course in 15 minutes, 2.6 seconds.

“I was just focused on the team and doing it for them,” Leonard said. “It took the individual pressure off just worrying about the team, so it was pretty good.”

To go with Leonard’s performance, Carroll XC collectively ran a strong team race to secure their 10th overall regional title with 58 points, outscoring a familiar Texas opponent in Bridgeland XC with 74 points for second.

Three weeks after facing each other at the UIL State Championships, Leonard met his match again in Ben Montgomery of Bridgeland, who finished second to Leonard at state.

The two were side-by-side with one another through the first two miles, completing the first lap in 4:52.3, then 9:58.7 on the second. Once they hit the start of the final lap, Leonard showed his strengths.

The junior began to pull away from Montgomery, just like he did at the Texas state meet, opening a lead by as much as 10 seconds with one kilometer to go.

Montgomery managed to close the gap by a hair in the last 300 meters, but the result saw Leonard finishing eight seconds ahead of Montgomery, who ran 15:10.9 for second.

Just four spots behind those two, five individual berths to represent the NXR South team were up for grabs.

Brady Mullen, the Louisiana Division 1 state champion, crawled all the way back from 47th place after the first lap to snag a third-place finish in 15:11. 

Danny (Aidan) Torres, who qualified as an NXR South individual last year, followed closely in fourth in 15:15.6, with Noah Strohman trailing by four seconds in fifth in 15:19.8 and Aiden Monistere, another four seconds further back, in sixth in 15:23.2.

Blake Bullard was the next finisher across the line in seventh but was already a member of Carroll XC’s team, giving Joaquin De La Cruz a chance to snag that fifth and final individual berth, finishing eighth overall in 15:31.3.

Flower Mound Girls Dominate; Carroll Edges Bridgeland

Alexandra Fox and Adeline Bennett earned top 10 individual finishes, and the Flower Mound girls secured another berth to Nike Cross Nationals for a fourth time in program history after winning the team title in the girls championship race.

Fox, a future Texas A&M Aggie, ran herself to a seventh-place finish in 17:37.8, and Bennett ran 17:56 for ninth to both earn All-Region honors and punctuate a 44-point outing for Flower Mound. 

Ava Cole (18:28, 20th) and Liana Cluley-Garza (18:28.3, 21st) also earned All-Region honors to add to Flower Mound’s team dominance. 

Carroll XC and Bridgeland XC went back-and-forth with each other for second and third place from the completion of the first lap. 

Trailing by as much as 12 points after lap one, Bridgeland XC flipped the score on Carroll XC going into the final lap and took a one-point lead with under a mile to go. 

Similar to what the boys team accomplished in the latter half of their race, the Carroll XC girls packed up in the closing stages to finish with a 49-second five-runner spread, resulting in a two-point swing over Bridgeland XC to secure the second auto-qualifier. 

Elizabeth Smith finished as Carroll XC’s top scorer in 27th in 18:39.3.

On the individual side, Lilly Beshears of Rogers of Arkansas emerged victoriously with an 11-second win over the reigning regional champion Elizabeth Leachman, earning her first trip to Nike Cross Nationals.

Beshears, who notably won the Chile Pepper Invitational back in September, surged away from not only Leachman, but a group of four other individuals vying for a spot on the NXR South individual team in the last 800 meters, coming away with 17:07.40 effort for the win.

Leachman, who’s been dealing with injuries on and off throughout the year and was a game-time decision whether to compete Saturday, did enough to secure a second trip to nationals with a second-place effort.

Leachman was also one of four Texas state champions to finish in the top five individually, with Sophia Bendet finishing third in 17:18.9, Macy Wingard in fourth in 17:26.10 and Elin Latta in fifth in 17:28.8. Those four will join Beshears as the individual representatives at nationals.