WILLINGBORO - If you were looking for drama, Mill Creek Park was the wrong place to be.

If you wanted to see boring, lopsided performances from some of the state's best runners, it was the perfect place to be.

Cinnaminson High School senior Jon Anderson won his first county title and Cherokee won its third straight team title and sixth in the last seven years, and both did it in commanding fashion Friday at the 33rd annual Burlington County Open cross country championships.

Anderson, third behind Cherokee's Marc Pelerin and Keith Krieger two years ago and second to Krieger last year, separated from the field after half a mile and coasted to a 125-meter win over Cherokee junior Tom Yersak.

Cherokee, despite running a sloppy team race, packed its five scorers in the top 10 to outscore perennial Group 1 power Maple Shade, 29-84.

Last year's meet featured a tightly wound race between Anderson and Krieger and a taut team battle between Cherokee and Cinnaminson.

This one had none of that drama.

"I just tried to keep pushing myself," said Anderson, who hasn't lost to a South Jersey runner this fall. "I knew if I just ran my race I'd be OK, but it wasn't an easy race. I knew I couldn't fall asleep. When you're in the woods, you can't hear anybody coming up on you so you have to keep moving."

Anderson is only the second Cinnaminson runner to win a county XC title. Bill Mason won in 1998 at Cherokee.

Anderson covered the 5,000-meter (plus a few) Mill Creek layout in 16:23. The only other runners under 17 minutes on a windy, blustery Friday afternoon were junior Tom Yersak and sophomore Greg Bredeck of Cherokee.

The Chiefs have won nine of the last 16 county titles. Cherokee and Shawnee own the last 10 team championships and 15 of the last 16.

This is a different kind of Cherokee team, with no clear frontrunner like Joe Halin, Pelerin or Krieger.

Yersak and Bredeck and usually Sean McLoughlin are generally in the lead group, but without a superstar this group relies more on pack running than any previous Cherokee team during its championship run.

"It's different than it has been," Yersak said. "We all work off each other and it's definitely more of a team effort. But it definitely puts more pressure on all of us because we know we don't have that one guy out front that we can always count on. But it also helps us to stay aggressive. We know we all have to run well if we're going to do what we want to do."

Junior James Maneval (fifth), senior Nick Freeman (ninth) and junior Mike Candy (10th) gave Cherokee a tight 31-second pack. Five of the first nine underclassmen across the line were wearing Chiefs singlets.

"When you know you're going to win, you try to use different things for motivation," Yersak said. "Today, one of our goals was to get six in the top 10 and we had five in the top 10, so we came pretty close.

"It was a pretty tough race for me and Greg because we both ran most of the race by ourselves in no man's land. It's definitely easier when you have somebody to run with."

Tiny Maple Shade, enrollment 400, toppled everybody in the county other than Cherokee, recording its best finish ever by defeating Cinnaminson by one and Moorestown by 20.

Soph James Buinicky and seniors Rick Hall and Tim Rose gave coach John Mitchell three in the top 14, an impressive achievement for any school, much less for one of the county's smallest.

Maple Shade is working toward a highly anticipated showdown with Bernards in three weeks at Holmdel to determine the state Group 1 champion.

"We think about them every day," Hall said. "We try not to, but it happens. On the bus, Mitch told us Bernards was second (to Bridgewater) in their (Somerset) County meet, so that fired us up.

"We knew we had to try to be second here to keep up with them. Even if they're not here, they push us."

Seniors Ken Thompson and Brian Holaday gave Moorestown two in the top seven.

Junior Anthony Kelhower placed sixth, the best finish by a Lenape runner since Brad Bisinger won in 1997.

Email: rfrank@phillyBurbs.com.