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It's been three years in the making, but the Charles H. Flowers High School girls' cross country team has shaken up the county hierarchy.

With five runners finishing in the top 15, the Jaguars dethroned Eleanor Roosevelt for county supremacy and won the Springdale school's first team title in cross country in the Oct. 21 county championship meet at Fort Washington Park. The Jaguars finished with the low team score of 31 points, easily beating second-place Roosevelt (58 points). With the win, Flowers broke Roosevelt's six-year stranglehold on the county championship.

"I definitely thought we could do it," said an emotional Flowers coach Tracee Gilchrist, her voice cracking at times. "This is a really talented group of girls. I could see them working more together. The last two years we finished as runner-up, and immediately after last year's race, I told them to internalize that feeling and that they better come out hard if they wanted to win this year. This is a better feeling than I ever had [while I was] running."

While Roosevelt junior Amirah Johnson won the girls' race, finishing the 5-kilometer course with a time of 19 minutes, 31.9 seconds, Flowers got top-15 finishes from T'Nay Williams (third/21:18.64), Danielle Gainer (fourth/21:37.04), Asia Lewis (fifth/21:59.65), Camille Washington (11th/22:58.89) and Denae Ford (12th/22:59.57).

The same group helped the Jaguars to the program's first team berth in the state championship meet in 2007. The five runners – now all in their senior seasons – grew closer as time went by.

"All I can say is that it was teamwork," Williams said. "If it were not for everyone on the team, we could have did nothing. We use each other in practice to get better. We wanted to go out with a bang and break the cycle of Roosevelt always winning."

While the Roosevelt girls saw their championship streak end, the Raider boys maintained the status quo, taking the county title with 28 points. Charles Bolinger propelled the Raiders with a first-place finish in 17:34.85. He was followed by teammates Justin Ahalt (seconds/17:35.20), Adam Snyder (seventh/19:01.22), Carl White (10th/19:04.69) and Xavier Thompson (14th/19:19.07).

"At first we were thinking about not running the race," Bolinger said. "We usually have the varsity sit out the county championships, but we saw a story about Bowie in the newspaper and we wanted to come out here and win. I think we're a really strong team."

Other notable performances on the girls' side included Frederick Douglass High senior Gloria Roberts, who finished second (19:50.44), and Parkdale senior Elizabeth Carino (22:18.59). The Largo girls finished third in the team standings with 73 points.

On the boys' side, Gwynn Park High senior Chris Henry was the lone runner from the County 3A/2A/1A League to finish in the top 10 (fifth/18:34.87), while the Bowie boys finished second (64 points) and the Wise boys finished third (70 points).

E-mail Terron Hampton at thampton@gazette.net.