University High girls repeat as state XC champs, boys settle for runner-up after tiebreaker

MEMPHIS — University High cross country entered Friday looking to repeat as state champions in both the boys' and girls' on Friday, and came painfully close to doing so. The Lady Bucs got the job done, dominating the field with just 55 points to take home gold over McKenzie. However, the UH boys lost a tiebreaker with Gatlinburg-Pittman for first place. In the girls' race, Lucy Smith set the pace for University High runners with a time of 19:45.1, good for fifth place overall of the 5K course. She was 45.9 seconds behind Dresden's Hudson McDaniel for the win. Behind Smith, Naomi Vance finished ninth, Sarah Mussard was 10th, Avery Cull crossed the line 12th and Madalyn VanZant was 34th to win the title. Lorenza Maylock finished 48th, but her placing didn't count towards the team score. The win in the seventh girls' cross country championship for University High, with the other wins coming in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2025. Elsewhere in the girls' race, South Greene finished 10th place, led by a sixth-place finish for Chelsea Metcalf. Running as an individual, Happy Valley's Megan Blevins posted a 50th place finish out of 115 runners. Meanwhile on the boys' side, both the Bucs and G-P posted 72 points to top the team leaderboard. Lucas Mathewes finished third overall to lead UH with a time of 16:24.7. Just behind him in sixth was River Smith, and trailing closely was eighth-place Jude Lawon. Rounding out the Bucs' top-five was Aden Cull in 26th and Sawyer Smith in 51st. However, Charles Bomgardner finished with a time of 18:57.9 as the sixth Buc runner. He was around 1:12 behind the Highlanders' sixth-place runner, Wyatt Mathis, to come up on the short end of the tiebreaker. Still, it is the third time in program history the UH boys finished second in the state, joining the 2006 and 2009 efforts. Noah Case from South Greene ran the course with a time of 17:09.8 while West Greene's Julian Greenlee ran it in 18:12.6. Division I-AA In the Class AA boys' race, Greeneville's Trey Bailey went back-to-back as an individual state champion. Bailey, a senior, completed the course in 14:54.8, roughly 18 seconds faster than his time in 2025. The only other individual champion for Greene Devil cross country came with Wesley Pectol's effort in 2013. Bailey's work helped lead Greeneville to a fifth-place team finish, well behind the 69 points of team champion Central Magnet. The next-highest finishing team from the area was Unicoi County, who lost a tiebreaker for sixth place to end up in seventh. The Blue Devils were led by Mckinley Norris, who finished eighth overall. Volunteer finished as the 10th best team and Elizabethton was 16th. Cherokee was represented by William Ely (52nd) and Brayden Brown (58th) while Trysten Walden (85th) ran for Sullivan East. In the girls' race, Signal Mountain just edged out Hume-Fogg 77-78. Cherokee finished in fifth place, led by a time of 20:01.0 by Anna Mae Boyd. Kenady Deal was the next-closest Lady Chief, 38.6 seconds behind Boyd to finish 25th place. Sullivan East finished eighth being paced by Lauren Ellis in 49th place. Maggie Moore's eighth-place finish led the way for a Greeneville unit that finished in 11th as a team, 39 points ahead of Volunteer in 12th. Unicoi County's Braydin Baresel was the best local finisher runner as an individual, crossing the line sixth with a time of 19:19.22. Elizabethton boasted a pair of runners, Arvella Nave, who finished 15th, and Alice Hackett in 64th. Division II-A The Providence Academy girls' squad finished sixth in the state this week. Ryan Belt finished seventh overall and Rose Holland finished 13th to make the all-state team.