Maroon and Armstrong place in Top 25 at State finals, team finishes 6th
By Fred Kroner
Seniors Carson Maroon and Aden Armstrong both earned All-State accolades for the St. Joseph-Ogden boys’ cross-country team on Saturday (Nov. 4).
The IHSA designates the top 25 placers at the state meet with All-State status.
Maroon ran the 3-mile course in 15 minutes, 6.55 seconds and was ninth in the 256-runner Class 1A state finals.
Armstrong was timed in 15:21.73 and placed 22nd.
Their efforts helped the Spartans secure a sixth-place team finish in the 30-school meet.
The team champion was Tuscola (97 points), followed by Benton (104 points), Elmwood (166 points) and Niles Northridge Prep (202 points).
SJ-O took sixth with 217 points.
The Spartans’ other state competitors were junior Jack Fisher (52nd in 15:51.18), junior Mason Guido (90th in 16:20.65), sophomore Lance Retz (120th in 16:36.51), freshman Colin Burnett (162nd in 17:01.90) and senior Holden Jones (229th in 18:05.04.
For SJ-O, it was the seventh top-10 team finish at state under coach Jason Retz in the last 10 meets conducted by the IHSA since 2013. (There was no meet in 2020 due to COVID-19).
The school’s last three top-10 state finishes were all for sixth place (2023, 2021 and 2017) and the only finish higher than sixth since 2013 was a third-place performance in 2015.
The showings by Maroon and Armstrong provided SJ-O with its 22nd and 23rd All-Statersin boys’ cross-country. This year is the sixth one all-time for multiple All-Staters in the same year.
The other elite years for SJ-O were 1992 (six All-Staters), 1993 (three All-Staters), 1996 (two All-Staters), 2016 (two All-Staters) and 2017 (two All-Staters).
The Spartans had one All-Stater in 1980, 1982, 1995, 1997, 2013 and 2018.
