Last season, the Springfield Shawnee boys cross country team gathered in a circle and waited for the team scores to be sorted out at the state cross country meet.

The magic that was with them last year, when they claimed the state title, avoided them this year.

The Braves finished third with 110 points in the Division II team race, one point out of second. Woodbridge won the title with 83 points. Defiance finished second.

“Last year was tense,” Shawnee senior Michael Tymoski said after finishing fourth. “The waiting is tough.”

Almost as tough as following up a state title run.

“The pressure is on you,” Tymoski said. “Knowing we won last season, if we didn’t, we would have come back and set a new goal. Since we did win it last year, we wanted to repeat what we did. That was a major goal.”

Led by Tymoski, the Braves made a major push through the final mile.

Shawnee was sixth after the first mile and in the same spot heading into the final mile before passing Akron St. Vincent-St. Mary, Granville and Cuyahoga Village Christian Academy over the final mile to just miss out on a spot on the podium.

“We started out a little slow,” Tymoski said. “We wanted to pair up with someone from another team that we knew would be up there.”

After the first mile, Tymoski was 25th, but moved up to sixth heading into the final mile before finishing fourth in 15:54.

“I had to pick it up the second mile,” Tymoski said. “That took a lot out of me. I knew the leaders would be around 15:50 and I was right there.”

Sophomore Will Holmes was second man for the Braves, finishing 20th in 16:19 while senior Austin Szekacs was 22nd in 16:21 in his final high school race.

Senior Meghan Vogel paced West Liberty-Salem’s to sixth place in the Division III girls race with 158 points. Vogel finished fifth in 18:24.

Northeastern’s Madison King was 19th in the Division II girls race in 19:04.

West Liberty-Salem finished 16th in the Division III boys race with 339 points.