With two new consecutive all-time school records, a top 20 national ranking and second place ranking in the northeast, the boys cross country team has captured the WHS athletic spotlight. Breaking several individual and group records, the boys started off their season stronger than ever.
Taking on the Bowdoin course in Wappinger Falls, NY to begin the season on September 23 was not an easy task, but with a first place Varsity I individual time of 16:03, senior captain Avery Keith led the Blue Devils to their meet victory. Senior captain Jimmy Gildea, with a time of 16:16, followed shortly behind in fourth place. Additionally, senior captain Eamon Mason, senior captain Tage Mehta, and junior Ryan Daly ranked in the top 15 out of the 144 total athletes who raced.
Overall, the team placed first in the entire meet with a total of 38 points, crushing the runner up by 66 points. Additionally, five of the runners who competed in the meet placed within the top 10 for all-time records for WHS on the Bowdoin course.
Head coach Chris Tafelski said, “We probably had one of the best starts to a season ever. We knew we were going to have a good team coming back because we had really good results in the last few track seasons. We’ve started out really well.”
Although the boys were successful in the past few years, their expectations going into this season were shockingly low. Keith said, “We went into cross country last year really eager and excited and that kind of came back to bite us at the end. So we went in with lower expectations this year and outperformed our expectations.” These lower expectations provided less stress from the boys giving them the ability to excel in a low pressure environment.
Coming off from a high at Bowdoin, the boys kept their expectations reasonable for the New Balance Shore Coaches Invitational meet in Holmdel, NJ on September 30. The boys placed second in the entire meet, only losing to the third-ranked team in the nation, Christian Brothers Academy, by eight points.
“We had a battle with CBA to take them down as the underdogs. Some might say we came up short, but we had CBA realize we could beat them as a team,” said Gildea.
The group of Keith, Mason, Daly, Gildea and senior Graham Korins put together a WHS record time of 16:08, annihilating the past record by a total of 22 seconds. Keith led the boys with a time of 15:56, coming in fourth place overall in the meet.
This success did not come easily. The boys began to train for the cross country season starting in June. “Our guys were out there all summer long… our expectation for the kids is that they are going to be running all summer, six days a week,” said Tafelski. “Even now that school started, they are still out in the morning, getting runs in and stuff like that. We have done a lot of preparation.”
While cross country may seem like an individual sport, without the full effort and support from each runner, the team will not excel the way it should. The boys have less than two weeks before their next big meet at Warinanco Park, NJ on October 19 and are looking to improve in keeping the runners closer together, in a pack, while racing.
Mehta said, “We want to make that pack a little bit tighter. Getting everyone together at our first race, we ran it as a group and we worked really well.”
In the upcoming weeks, the boys will be laying low at practice and staying in good health. As the meet at Warinanco on October 19 approaches, they will begin to pick up the intensity of their training.
Mehta said, “I think what we’re doing right now is historic. We’re the best team that our school has ever had for cross country, the best public school that the state has ever had.”
