In almost every NJ sport the playoffs end in the group phase and six state champions are crowned. Four public schools, and two non-public schools separated by size. This is to be fair to the smaller school and the public schools due to the private school’s ability to recruit kids from other towns.
Cross Country is one of the only high school sports that crowns a single state champion and puts the public schools against the private schools. It’s called the Meet of Champions and it happened on Nov. 16, crowning one school as the undisputed champion.
Coming into the season Westfield was ranked 14th in the state after they had graduated six of their seven varsity members, so to everyone else this would be an off year for Westfield. But as senior Ryan Daly said, “We love being the underdogs.” The boys finished their season 10 spots above where they were expected, landing a 4th-place finish at the MOC.
Leading the charge was Daly placing 9th in the state with a 16:00. Next with the performance of the day was senior Cole Varner claiming 30th in the state with a blazing fast 16:30. Following them was junior Brody Toriello and senior Kaleb Stoeckmann placing 50th and 53rd respectively. Lastly rounding out the top five was sophomore Alex Davlouros in 69th place. All of those times were top 50 all-time individual performances for the Blue Devils.
Varner was extremely pleased with his performance, especially coming off of the disappointing performance that he had in the Group VI State Championship. He said, “I was really scared going into the race because it was going to be my first MOC and about 400 meters into the race it was really crowded and there were about 80 people in front of me, so I knew I had my work cut out for me. But I just listened to [Coach] Tafelski and stayed patient and made the moves at the correct time and it ended up working out for me pretty well.”
Moving up 50 spots in a race as crowded as the MOC isn’t easy but Varner managed to do it which made head coach Chris Tafelski very proud, he said, “He’s learning fast, you could talk about the races in meetings and stuff like that, but like until you experience it, it’s hard to wrap your head around what it is actually like. He was also one of the guys who was not happy with the way things went last week and just pulled himself together and double backed down, put it behind him and committed to racing well today and as a coach, that’s super satisfying and I couldn’t be more proud.”
Next weekend the boys may have their final meet of the season, where they will be heading up to New York for the Nike Cross Regionals Meet. If they get top 2 in the region they will punch their ticket to the Nike Cross Nationals Meet where the top 20 teams in the country will battle it out for the national title. Although it’s a very tough field of competitors, Daly said, “Don’t count us out yet.”
