On Oct. 4, the Westfield cross country program ran at the annual Shore Coaches Invitational at Holmdel Park in Holmdel, NJ, to test their performances against almost 200 teams, in one of New Jersey’s biggest and most infamous cross country meets.
Despite coming to this same meet every year, boys’ head coach Christopher Tafelski said, “This was probably the most competitive Shore [Coaches] race ever,” due to new circumstances. For the first time, “there were a lot of teams from out of state that were here, that made it a lot deeper.”
Both the boys and girls teams shared the similarity that their varsity roster for this meet consisted of runners who are new to running at the varsity level at Holmdel, which is an infamous course. Holmdel is one of the hardest high school cross country courses in the nation, making it a challenge in and of itself. But factor in the inexperience, competition and the particularly hot weather for October, it was an intense day for competition. Yet the Blue Devils delivered some great overall performances.
Girls’ head coach Joseph Berardi said, “The big thing was every time this course kind of stings you or hurts you a little bit, it gives you a chance to recover. And I think the girls did a really nice job.”
In their respective races, the boys’ team placed sixth overall, led by senior Brody Toriello, and the girls placed eighth, led by sophomore Oriana Soloway.
Toriello placed 8th overall with an honorable time of 16:15. He said, “I didn’t go out as fast as I planned, but throughout the second half I progressed well and I think I did my job.”
Following that, junior Alexander Davlourous took 36th with a time of 17:12. Furthermore, sophomore Lincoln Staiger (17:29), junior Brent Kengeri (17:30) and senior Christian Buonopane (17:33) finished 46th, 47th and 48th, respectively, to round out their 5 scoring runners.
Due to the inexperience and the nature of the competition, the boys did not perform as well as they had hoped, but gained some needed and valuable experience. Tafelski said, “Our mission coming in was to learn about the course and learn about how we race it, [so] I think we’ve got some things that we can go back to practice and work on. When we come back here for a state meet in a month, we’ll be good to go.”
The girls experienced similar circumstances with a few top varsity runners being out on injuries, thus pulling up less experienced, younger girls to represent Westfield in the varsity setting. The girls were led by Soloway, who placed 27th overall, running 21 minutes flat. Sophomore Natalie Salzano (21:50) followed in 45th, junior Evelyn Charles (22:55) took 67th, and sophomore Evangeline Van Brunt (23:10) and senior Claire Sewald (23:13) went 71st and 72nd as the top 5 scorers.
Although the girls likely didn’t perform to their top abilities, they gave the race their all and fought through the hard barriers the day had in store. Soloway said, “ It was a hot day, but everyone stayed really positive and everyone was keeping a good mindset, helping each other through it.”
They will race next on Oct. 10 at the Greyston Invitational, where they hope to put up strong performances, using Holmdel’s training to fuel themselves for the approaching championship season.
