Rebuilding?

20 hours ago

4 min read

Before the season started I was talking with a fellow coach about the upcoming season and they told me they were rebuilding. The more I thought about it, I didn't like that terminology. I understood what they meant. Teams are always dealing with graduating a very talented senior class, navigating injuries, or dealing with athletes not even coming out, but the DIY'er in me sees rebuilding in a different light. Rebuilding is often seen as the following

Process: Requires tearing down or demolishing the old structure first, often due to severe damage, old age, or deep structural flaws.

As a coach, I view every season as building. Rebuilding means tearing away the old. Every season whether it cross country, winter track or spring track, we build. Sometimes we might add some new pieces like freshman coming out, or upperclassmen trying the sport for the first time, but with the returning athletes we want to constantly build from where they left off. Sometimes when your building you get a lot done in one day, and sometimes you may work in just one spot for the entire day. Same happens with athlete's seasons. Sometimes huge strides are made, and sometimes you just seems like you aren't making progress. Just keep putting in the work.

So as we start the 2026 cross country season, we continue to build. We opened up on September 4th with our very own Cherokee Challenge. This marked the 30th running of the Cherokee Challenge since its inception in 1996. This year had one twist. For the first time since the beginning, the meet was on a Friday afternoon. This was due to the start of school which was actually Aug 31st!! and the labor day weekend and Rosha Shannah. So 4:00 was the first high school race with the freshman girls.

Over all the team did well. The girls placed 4th as a team and won the co-ed meet with the boys. Top finishers in each race were Freshman Samantha Finley running 14:52 to place 21st. Sophomore Ava Guarini 12:28 to finish 3rd. Junior Erin Healy 12:24 to finish 4th and Senior Gabby Urban 13:14 to finish 16th. All in all we had 12 girls run their fastest time ever over the 2 mile course at Cherokee.

We next saw our team compete at the Holmdel Opener, where the entire team ran the 2 mile course. This marks the first time in school history that anyone other than a freshman ran the 2 mile course at Holmdel. Despite missing a few girls, the JV team finished 5th. They were led by Chloe Burdette 23rd running 17:11, Kyla Petragnani 27th running 17:24, Elise Barcenas 25th running 17:17, Lila LePore 35th running 17:51, Jocelyn Schwartz 37th running 17:59, Taylor Reddington 56th running 19:22 and Karien Mansour70th running 22:05.

The varsity team finished 2nd and were led by Ava Guarini and Erin Healy. Ava clocked 13:03 to place 2nd. Her time is the fastest any Cherokee athlete has ever run on the 2 mile course. Erin Healy ran 13:18 to place 3rd with the #3 all time mark. Casey Leisse ran 14:20 to place 15th, Gabby Urban ran 14:21 to place 17th and Ella Holloway ran 14:33 to place 20th. Finishing our top 7 were Sonal Patel 15:32 for 50th and Samantha Finley 16:32 to place 38th.

Our first go at a 5k was this past Saturday at the Shore Coaches Invitational. For the first time ever, they decided to change the order of events and that let us see our JV and Varsity squads race in the morning.We were missing quite a few athletes due to sickness and some nagging injuries. With our goals focused on the Championship part of the season, we felt this was in the athletes best interest. The JV A race was the second race of the day. This race really showed all the hard work that the girls have put in. When comparing last year's Shore Coaches times to this year, many saw dramatic improvement. Other ran their first ever 5k at Holmdel. The JV Team finished 7th over all led by Alexa Butler who ran a lifetime best for Holmdel placing 28th. After Alexa was freshman Samantha Finley, who had actually run the 5k course last year as a middle schooler. She ran 24:59 to place 37th. We then managed to get our 3-6 runner in pretty close together. Jocelyn Schwartz was 44th running 25:29, Kyla Petragnani was 48th running 25:37, Elise Barcenas ran 25:37 to place 28th and Lila LePore ran 26:15 to place 59th.

JV A	2025 time	2026 Time	Place
Alexa Butler	25:49	24:25	28
Samanth Finley		24:59	37
Jocelyn Schwartz	28:09	25:29	44
Kyla Petragnani	27:07	25:37	48
Elise Barcenas		25:49	55
Lila LePore		26:15	59
Karien Mansour	32:35	32:02	114

The varsity squad was definitely short handed running only 3 athletes. Junior Erin Healy ran an incredible race just missing her lifetime best at Holmdel by 7 seconds. She covered the course in 19:38 to place 11th. Her time was almost a minute faster than she ran at Shore Coaches last year. Sophomore Casey Leisse ran her first ever 5k at Holmdel getting sidelined by injury last year after Sectionals and missing States and MOC's. She ran 21:28 and placed 38th. Gabby Urban was last in runngin 21:44 to place 42nd. Her time was a lifetime best for Holmdel.