Photos by Sam Chandler.
Cole Stidfole
Above left: Oak Mountain’s Cole Stidfole runs stride for stride with Hoover’s Tommy McDonough approaching the two-mile mark in the Class 7A boys race at the state meet Nov. 14. Stidfole would go on to finish second and McDonough sixth in the championship race.
By nearly all accounts, Oak Mountain junior cross-country runner Cole Stidfole should love the 5K course at Oakville Indian Mounds Park.
In each of his first three high school seasons, the Eagles’ standout posted personal-best performances on the firmly packed and relatively flat course, blasting through the elite 16-minute mark as a sophomore and recording the fastest time (15:20.45) of any Alabama prep runner earlier this season.
But no matter how fast he traversed the terrain, Stidfole had never been first to the finish, placing third at last year’s state meet and second at two previous races this fall.
For 3.09 miles of the 3.1-mile Class 7A race at the AHSAA State Cross Country Championships on Nov. 14, it looked like his championship moment had finally come.
Then, history repeated itself.
After leading for almost the entire race, Stidfole was passed by the 2014 state champion and familiar foe, Auburn’s Paul Barlow, in the closing meters, getting edged just strides before the line.
“I was leading the whole race because nobody else will lead,” Stidfole said, “and I just got passed at the very end, which is usually what Barlow does, sits and passes everybody at the end, but it’s all right, he ran a good race.”
The two fastest times at the state meet, Barlow’s 15:30.52 was less than two seconds ahead of Stidfole’s 15:32.48.
“It’s a repeat of what happened last year. It’s the same guy that, he was leading for the majority of the race and just got outkicked,” Oak Mountain coach Kyle Dudley said. “I hate it for him, he’s such a competitor. He’s such a good kid, works so hard and you know he wants to be first, and any good competitor would.”
Behind Stidfole’s runner-up showing and an All-State, 11th-place performance from junior Caleb Van Geffen (16:09.51), the Oak Mountain boys totaled 102 points and secured a fourth-place finish.
“My hat’s off to the other teams because we had some really, really outstanding races today,” Dudley said. “I know you always want to go for that state title, it didn’t happen this year, but I think we’ve laid a good foundation by making it here this year and hopefully in the future we’ll be contending again.”
Nicole Payne, the lone female qualifier from Oak Mountain who won the 7A 400-meter state title on the track last spring, also garnered All-State honors, rolling to a sixth-place finish in 18:47.24.
“I’m happy with how she did,” Dudley said. “An elite performer in anything from the 200 to the 5K, that’s a special athlete.”
In the 1A-2A division, the girls from the Westminster School at Oak Mountain narrowly missed winning a state team title. Maddie Hoaglund (4th), Sarah Kate Lipperd (5th), Camryn Neal (10th) and Hannah Richburg (13th) earned All-State recognition, leading the team to a one-point runner-up finish behind St. Bernard.
