Despite the muddy conditions at Oak Ridge Park after a weekend full of rain, Westfield Boys Cross-Country competed at the Union County Conference Championships. The Blue Devils battled through the tough conditions, finishing in second place and losing 41-23.
Westfield was led by a third-place finish by senior co-captain Brent Kengeri and a fourth-place finish by junior Lincoln Staiger, who ran 16:43 and 16:46, respectively. The Blue Devils’ final scorers were sophomore Luke Barba, senior Alexander Davlouros and junior Akash Mehta.
Staiger said, “I think that we executed the plan well. We went into the race wanting to go out there and give UC a little bit of a scare. During the race, I was just trying to stick with my teammates and the UC guys, just trying to put ourselves in a position to win, which I thought we did a good job of.”
“In the varsity race, one of our big goals was to break up UC, which on paper is one of the top teams in the Northeast and a local rival of ours,” said head coach Christopher Tafelski. “We want to demonstrate to them that, just because they are who they are and their track times to a guy are significantly better than ours last spring, last spring was a long time ago. We wanted to show that because they were better than us then, they are not necessarily better than us. I’m proud of how our guys ran.”
While focused on this race, Westfield quickly turned its attention to the next meet. Tafelski remarked that one of the difficulties for this race was that it would be run again next week at counties. That said, in prior years, the County meet was at a different course, Warinanco Park, but this year it will be run at Oak Ridge Park.
In addition to the top finish, the Blue Devils were ecstatic about players returning from injury; this includes senior Alexander Davlouros. “I think that today was a really big step forward for him. He placed in our top five today, which was really important for us,” Tafelski said, while also adding that the race was a “big step forward for him.”
Next week, Westfield will line up for the Union County Championship at Oak Ridge Park. Kengeri said, “If we prepare better for the next meet and race better, which we can definitely do, we can beat Union Catholic, which I am excited about. I want to win counties, and I want to win sectionals.”
