The Blue Devils wrapped up their historic XC season at Nike Cross Nationals on Dec. 2. The boys finished 19th out of 22 teams, ending their season with a top 20 national rank. Their season was memorable, as the Blue Devils proved themselves to be one of the top public school programs New Jersey has ever seen.
“We got everything we were hoping for this season,” said head coach Chris Tafelski.
History began at the boys first meet of the season at the Bowdoin Course on Sept. 23. At this meet, senior captain Avery Keith established himself as one of the top runners in New Jersey, running a 5K in 16 minutes 3 seconds. Four other Blue Devil runners placed in the top 15 in the meet, giving Westfield the victory and demonstrating their team dominance early on in the season.
To follow, the boys next meet was at the single most rigorous course in NJ. On Sept. 30, the boys raced at Holmdel Park at the New Balance Shore Coaches Invitational meet. Yet again, Keith led the pack with a time of 15:56, and the team averaged a time of 16:08, breaking the previous school record by 22 seconds.
After both of these meets, the boys were ranked 16th among cross country programs nationally.
Coming off of a high, the boys had disappointing results at the Union County Tournament championship, placing second overall behind Union Catholic.
On Oct. 28, despite their shortcoming in the previous meet, the boys took home the North 2, Group 4 sectional title at Greystone Park. Keith, who had been the most dominant runner all season, had not raced in this meet. However, other runners on the team such as senior captain Tage Mehta had stepped up. Mehta, with a time of 15:38, broke the course record.
As the season progressed, the Blue Devils had even more success. At the Group 4 championship at Holmdel Park, the boys placed first with an average time of 16:01, after placing second the year prior.
Tafelski said, “We’ve been second like six times by single digit margins. We’ve been really close a bunch of times, so it was a big deal. On paper, the outcome wasn’t really in doubt, but when you’ve come in second that many times, you gotta lock that down. So I mean, that was a really big accomplishment for the team.”
The next weekend at the Meet of Champions, the boys placed second overall with impressive performances by Keith, Mehta, and senior captain Jimmy Gildea. Although the team’s average time was 10 seconds slower than their last race, the boys only trailed the Christian Brother’s Academy by a slight 38 point difference. Overall, it was a very successful two races for the Blue Devils, and it demonstrated only a glimpse of their full potential going into the Northeast Regional meet.
In their best performance of the season, the boys placed second at their regional meet. Keith had placed fourth overall in the meet, and the boys had accumulated a total score of 69 points. The boys blew out their competition with the next closest team to the Blue Devils scoring 54 points higher. It was here that the boys qualified for the Nike Cross National meet.
“It was exciting to run right next to all of my teammates and come to the line and see everybody right there,” said Mehta. “We knew that we did it, and we knew that everyone followed through on what they were supposed to do. That was just really exciting because that was something we’ve been wanting for so long and to do it and actually go was crazy.”
As Mehta had expressed, qualifying for Nike Cross was by far the highlight of the Blue Devils spectacular season.
With all that Westfield accomplished this season, it will be difficult for next year’s team to live up to the standard that the 2023-24 team has set. Already, there is speculation that the future of the Blue Devil XC program will be disappointing.
Tafelski said, “I think a lot of people are going to be like, ‘Six of the seven varsity guys are graduating. Westfield is not going to be good,’ and I am going to enjoy it when they are all wrong.”
“I think we have some really good runners at the top level. We’ve got Ryan Daly and Caleb Stockman, and they’re both going to be really, really good. And then we have some JV winners that are gonna come up and I think surprise some people,” said Mehta.
The boys winter track season has already begun. With the standards high from the previous success of the cross country season, the boys winter track team is expected to make a similar historic run.
