Girls Cross Country: State Champions

By Tibbie Cleveland and Pia Halt

Only eight years ago, the BGA Girls Cross Country team consisted of one runner. In the time since, the team has experienced major growth, and in 2025, they earned the first cross state title in school history.

Bringing home the win with a total of 72 points, the girls were led by junior Julia Evans, with a time of 19:54. She was followed by sophomores Tibbie Cleveland (20:42) and Kiera Bray (21:02). The three finished top 15, earning all-state honors. Juniors Libby Rothfuss and Madeline Calkins closed out the scoring five as top 30 and top 40 runners, while senior Lola Padula and freshman Grace Kaplan followed among the top 60 runners.

In order to understand the team’s rapid development, I interviewed Assistant Coach Parker. Coach Parker lead the girls team alongside Coach Johnson, the Cross Country and Track and Field head coach, and Lindsay Phelps, a BGA alumna who competed in numerous region and state championships, and recently completed her second year of coaching cross country. 

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“How long have you been at BGA?”

Coach Parker: “I have been teaching at BGA for 24 years.”

“And how long have you been coaching cross country?”

Coach Parker: “I have been coaching for probably 10 years, it’s hard to remember. Luke Johnson and I have coached 8 years together.”

“So first main question — when that final score came in and you realized your team had made history, what was going through your mind?”

Coach Parker: “I think I was so excited for the girls and just watching them work day-in and day-out physically and then get through some emotional and mental hurdles. I think the joy that I had for these young ladies was what I felt. I was just so excited for them to have accomplished exactly what they set out to do as individuals and as a group.”

“What do you think made this year’s group special, and what set them apart from previous teams?” 

Coach Parker: “So we’ve had more girls this year than we’ve had in the past. But it’s not only that. It’s not just about the number. I think it’s about the talent and the attitude of the girls. They’re all individually motivated, but also watching them together, just the dynamic of how they supported each other, and worked hard and worked well together, was really different than years past. And they were so inclusive and no matter if you were a Tibbie Cleveland who finished, you know, at the beginning of a race, she would turn around and cheer on any other girl that was right behind her on her team. And the other girls would all kind of follow suit in that. And I think that’s one of the elements that made this group of girls so unique and so strong and capable of accomplishing what they did.” 

“How did you prepare your runners mentally and physically for the pressure of competing at the state level?”

Coach Parker: “Well, I think it’s multifaceted. I think Coach Johnson’s really good about the technical aspects, and building on what the kids have done weeks before, and building up to that point when the state final is with numbers and just the workouts, the track workouts. And then I think I am probably more of the emotional mental support coach who sees when there are individual runners struggling and helps support them through that whether it has to do with school or whatever. I think that there’s so many elements, not only physically, to get to that point, and I think Luke Johnson and I are a really good match in terms of coaching together and how we can support each runner as an athlete and a person.”

“Was there a specific moment during the season when you thought ‘we could win this’?”

Coach Parker: “I don’t know that there was a specific time. I think it started to grow as we watched the girls. Once they got through that first initial race, and then they started to see it in themselves as a group. I don’t think that there was a specific moment though. I think it kind of grew with time, and with each race.”

“Last question. Looking ahead, how do you plan to build on this success and keep the momentum going for next year?”

Coach Parker: “So we’re lucky enough to have all the girls back, and so I think we just continue. I think it’s contagious. Once you get a taste of it, making history the way they did, I think we just continued to build on that by, you know, hard work, which I think they’re all willing and wanting to do. And so I just think we build and we continue to support them and help them physically meet them where they are. Each year and, you know, every day is different and life for them is going to be different and life for us is going to be different next year, but we all seem to work well together. So hopefully, we’ll just build on that.”

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As Coach Parker states, the key to developing a winning team is multifaceted. As proven by the holistic model of athleticism, all aspects of a player’s life can influence their performance. It was with a varsity team willing to dedicate themselves wholly to serving their group that the cross country team was able to secure a state win.

Congratulations XC!