Battling

The first step in the waters for a 5k for a lot of the people on the team. Friday

Sept. 15th, we headed to Lakewood NJ to run in the Battle at OC Park. This is another class race with the freshman running 2 miles and the rest of the classes racing a 5k. Things started off with the freshman race where we saw Gabby Urban once again get some hardware. Gabby ran 14:39 to place 21st. Her time is #3 AT on the freshman course. Also in the freshman race was Alexa Butler(16:21 52nd), Hafsa Salahuddin(17:48 77th) and Brooke Garrity(21:37 108th). The Freshman team combined for 116 points to finish 11th.

The sophomore race once again had our lone Soph. Maya Kumar scored a medal running 21:40 to place 25th. Her time is a lifetime best for her.

The junior race saw some pretty impressive performances. Megan Niglio ran a lifetime best to finish 2nd running 19:04(#4 AT). Meg was followed by Grace Wojciechowski in her first official 5k. She clocked a 20:52 to place 10th(#9 AT). Next in was Emily Butler 23:36(50th), Veronica Ashcraft 23:39(51st), Grace Gorsline 23:41(53rd) and Selen Arkan 26:50(91st) The junior team placed 3rd scoring 52 points.

The day ended with the senior race and this group won the class race as sophomores and reclaimed their title. Kerry O'Day ran a lifetime best of 18:28 to finish 2nd. Her time breaks our school record at OC Park of 18:30 set by Nikki Clifford in 2021 when she won the senior race. Lainy Bromley was our next medal winner with a 10th place finish in a time of 20:58. Maddie Van Haren also got her first XC medal running a lifetime best of 21:37 to finish 23rd. Alli Rathman finished 39th running 22:30. Combined they scored 26 points to take the victory.

Merging the results of the three classes that ran a 5k, the team would have finished 2nd behind Middletown South. That is very promising since we were missing a few of our runners. Next on tap for the girls will be the Shore Coaches Invitational on Sept. 30th