As they closed out the regular season on Saturday, the Battlefield varsity cross country teams built a head-full of steam.

Both the boys and girls A-list runners finished second at The Stampede Classic in Lorton, the final meet on the calendar prior to districts.

Added to that, the boys junior varsity team won its meet and the girls varsity B-list runners earned second place.

"I think we had, across the board... a great meet at the end of the regular season," said head coach Jeff Michaelis.

Nicole Carter led the charge for the A-list girls with a second-place finish of her own, clocking in at 19:13.64 according to statistics provided by the track and cross country website MileStat.

She was just one of four runners to finish in under 20 minutes, joining first-place finisher Isabel Amend of Washington-Lee, Our Lady of Good Counsel's Taylor Kozam and Rebecca Vinter of Centreville.

Her top teammates most all ran as a pack, with only 28.16 seconds separating 12th-place finisher Rachel Thompson (21:08.08) from 27th-place Sarai Arbus (21:36.24).

Ellison Grove (14th; 21:10.57) and Kristen Loehle (26th; 21:36.24) registered times in between them.

Only the times of the top-five finishers from any team are used to determine point totals and the team with the lowest score wins.

However, Battlefield's Sabrina Poland (38th; 21:50.86) and Jordan Robson (47th; 22:12.79) both crossed the finish line less than a minute after Arbus.

As a team, Battlefield tallied 81 points, putting the Bobcats 15 points behind first-place McLean and three points ahead of Washington and Lee.

Battlefield may have some problems besting their second-place finish at the Cedar Run District championship this Thurday.

The date was originally scheduled for October 19 but changed on Monday to October 20 due to the threat of rain on Wednesday.

Michaelis explained that three of his best runners -- Carter, Thompson and Loehle -- already planned to visit out-of-state colleges that day and cannot reschedule.

"We're still three days out," Michaelis said on October 17, clearly unhappy about the sudden change.

For obvious reasons, he wanted the date moved back to October 19 and seemed to suggest that the move could significantly hurt his team's chances of winning the championship.

As for the boys over the weekend, the varsity A-list Bobcats closed out their portion of the regular season by also ending up in second place behind Our Lady of Good Counsel (40 points).

The Falcons had a phenomenal showing, holding three spots in the top 10, including Jack Riely in first place. All five of their runners cracked the top 20.

Even OLGC's sixth-place runner, who finished in 19th, would have placed fourth for Battlefield.

The Bobcats edged out Stone Bridge for second by a 71-81 margin as Conner Lee (fourth; 17:03.34) and Luke Mazzu (eighth; 17:13.60) both broke the top 10.

Aaron Hill checked in 14th with a time of 17:39.55, less than 13 seconds ahead of teammate Ryan Miller (21st, 17:52.32).

Cameron Henken rounded out Battlefield's scoring runner with a 18:03.49, good enough for 24th place overall.

Battlefield only ran five runners in the meet, excluding the team's superstar Haben Zemichael.

He and varsity girls runner Hannah Schwennesen both sat out the meet over the weekend in order to rest up for districts.

According to Michaelis, Schwennesen should be back to 100 percent in terms of health by then while Zemichael should be at "90-something."

Also this past weekend, the Brentsville District varsity A-list boys team finished 14th and the girls came in 16 place at the MileStat.com Invitational in Chesterfield.

Mike Blair took top honors for the boys with a 31st-place showing while Haley Ruiz came in 59th overall for the girls.

Brentsville is set to host the Evergreen District championship on October 25.