OBETZ — The Lexington boys cross country team began this season by refusing to talk about defending a state championship. The Minutemen ended it one point away from winning another one. Lexington scored 182 points to finish second in the Division II race at the Ohio High School Athletic Association state championships on Saturday, Nov. 7, at Fortress Obetz, a single point behind state champion Bowling Green’s 181, according to the Mansfield News Journal.
The runner-up finish is the third in program history for Lexington, alongside state championships in 2015, 2017 and 2025, the Mansfield News Journal reported. For a team that replaced four of its top seven runners from last year’s title squad — and sent its top two off to college programs, including Oregon — second place by the narrowest possible margin was a result almost nobody in purple saw coming in August.
Coach Denise Benson set the tone before the season began. The focus of the new-look Minutemen was absolutely not going to be centered on defending their 2025 Division II state championship, she made clear, and the team ran the season with clear minds instead of a target on its back, the Mansfield News Journal reported. “Once we knew that we could put something together, their eyes started to turn to that,” Benson told the Mansfield News Journal. “We saw that in tournament time. Once we got rolling and that team chemistry reached its peak, it turned into something very special. They improved and trusted each other.”
That trust showed up a week earlier, when Lexington won its regional championship by topping the top two ranked teams in the state, including Bowling Green, the Mansfield News Journal reported. “Being regional champions last week, we kind of knew that was the state meet in itself,” Benson told the Mansfield News Journal. “We knew it would be a battle again today and to see it came down to one point kind of stings, but I couldn’t be more proud of them.”
Junior Christian Estep led the Minutemen on Saturday, finishing 18th overall in 15:54.5, while senior John Bartone was 33rd in 16:05.0, and both earned All-Ohio honors for the first time in their careers, according to the Mansfield News Journal. “It means so much,” Estep told the Mansfield News Journal. “I am so grateful for God. I had a rocky start to the season and just to be back and competing well for my teammates means so much. This is all for them because I am so grateful for each one of them.”
Bartone echoed that team-first framing. “This team is such a family to me, so I am not more excited about being an All-Ohioan than I am with our state runner-up trophy,” Bartone told the Mansfield News Journal. “It’s not about me, it’s not about Christian, it was about all of us coming together on this day to be second. It’s a special thing.”
Behind the two All-Ohioans, Lexington’s scoring five was senior Will Hooper in 49th at 16:14.9, sophomore Mathias Bender in 73rd at 16:28.0 and junior Chidalu Ezike in 126th at 17:00.4, with sophomore Jace Dawson (192nd, 17:42.2) and sophomore Caden Henry (209th, 18:05.6) as the displacement runners, the Mansfield News Journal reported. Benson singled out her fifth scorer afterward: “Huge shoutout to Christian, John and Chidalu Ezike, our fifth guy, who was in a tough spot and got it done,” Benson told the Mansfield News Journal. “He was the closest to his PR.”
The race turned late. Lexington sat fifth as a team at the two-mile mark and appeared all but sunk before rallying three places to second over the final stretch, according to the Mansfield News Journal. “Coach Benson was preaching to race smart,” Estep told the Mansfield News Journal. “She knows how to peak us and get us right. It was all about trusting our training. I always tell myself that if I am not passing people, I am slowing down.”
Lexington’s finish capped a full day of state cross country finals at Fortress Obetz, where the Aurora girls won their first state title in Division II and the Woodridge boys repeated as Division III champions. In Division II boys, the trophy went home with Bowling Green by the slimmest margin the scoring system allows — one point, the difference across five scoring runners of a single place somewhere in the pack.
What we know — and what we’re still waiting on
Confirmed from Obetz: Bowling Green 181, Lexington 182, with Estep and Bartone earning All-Ohio honors and Lexington’s third state runner-up finish secured. What the one-point margin guarantees is a winter of what-ifs — one place gained anywhere in the top five flips the championship — but the Minutemen were having none of that framing on Saturday. “At the beginning of the season, we kind of asked ourselves if this was something we could even do,” Bartone told the Mansfield News Journal. “We were unsure. We didn’t know where we were going to be in the end. Last week, we put it all together and it made us believe.”
What happens next favors Lexington’s future: only Bartone and Hooper graduate from Saturday’s scoring five, while Estep, Bender and Ezike all return, giving the Minutemen the core of another title run in 2027. Benson closed the day by putting this group in program context. “They protected tradition,” she told the Mansfield News Journal. “This is my most improved team of all time.”