Off and Running

ladychiefstribe
Sep 15
3 min read

The 2025 XC season is officially under way as we now have two meet under our belt. This year's squad had a great summer training block and looks to be poised to pick up right where last year left off. Graduation hit hard as we lost three out of our top 7. Megan Niglio, Grace Wojciechowski and Emily Butler certainly left some big holes that needed to be filled, but with some new athletes joining the team as well as a good number of freshman coming out, things look promising.

The Cherokee Challenge continues to be our opener, and it is a good chance to see where we are. The team did very well in all four class class races. We had 8 girls run under 14 minutes, 4 girls under 13 minutes and for the first time ever we had two girls under 12 minutes on the same day. The freshman race started things off with Casey Leisse and Ava Guarini both running 13:16 to place 19th and 20th. Our top finisher in the sophomore race was Erin Healy who placed 8th running 12:50. In the Junior race Genisa John was our top finisher running 13:26 and in the Senior Race Alyssa Suriano finished 4th 11:42(#2 AT), Maddie Meder was 8th 11:59(#8 AT) and Sofia Recinto was 10th running 12:09(#14 AT). The team finished 6th and was the 3rd SJ team. All in all it was a great meet for all the athletes that ran.

Next up for the girls was our trip down to Virginia. We once again headed off to the RVA Relays to race under the lights. This marked the third time we have traveled down to Mechanicsville to race at Pole Green Park. Things got started off at 5:30 with the B/C Team relay race. Each team was comprised of 5 runners each running 2.5km. Our B team saw our best finish placing 6th. Our C team placed 9th. Results are below

B Team - 50:06 6th place C Team - 55:22 9th place

Ava Guarini - 10:10 Lilly Hazlett - 10:35

Genisa John - 10:01 Alexa Butler 11:26 Casey Leisse - 9:54 Sonal Patel - 10:57 Ella Holloway - 10:17 Kyla Petragnani - 11:51

Gabby Urban 9:41 Chloe Burdette - 10:32

Our Extras race was next at 7:00.

Jocelyn Schwartz - 11:45

Elise Barcenas - 11:49

Joelle Barcenas - 11:54

Karien Mansour - 12:55

Taylor Reddington - 13:08

Our last race was the last race of the night. The A Championship race went off at 8:50. Our best finish from the previous two times we were down here was 4th. Alyssa Suriano led things off splitting 8:34(#2 AT at RVA). She handed off to Maya Kumar in 4th place. Maya running in her first race since an ankle injury at the end of the summer kept us right in the mix. She split 9:23(#5 AT) and handed off to Sofia Recinto in 5th place. Sofia Recinto was up next for us and had a monster leg closing on the entire field. She split 8:48 and handed off dead even with first place to Erin Healy. Erin ran 9:07 to open up a big lead on the field setting Maddie Meder up for a great finishing leg. Maddie split 8:47(#4 AT). This was a great win for the end of a great trip. This truly was a team effort as the entire boys and girls team wer running around the course cheering the girls on.