1 Oct 12; from Steven M.
Catch up on past few meets
Newton South vs Westford and Wayland 9/19/2012
This was a good week for Newton South girls cross country. On Wednesday we improved our DCL record to 4 - 0 and 1 -0 in the large school division with a 15 - 50 win over host Wayland and 20 - 37 win over a Westford. We have gone against some very well coached teams that have a tradition of winning in the DCL and we respect our record because we respect our competition.
Wayland has constructed a new home course and this was the first meet to run on it. This is the toughest course in the DCL and it is listed as 2.9, but runs more like a 5K because of the footing and hills. In fact 5 of 6 of our girls ran faster in a 5K at Amherst than they did on this course.
Anna Rhatigan has set the first course record as she led our girls from the start with a time of 19:28 over the hilly and rough 2.9 mile course. Anna paced teammates freshman Rebecca Grusby, 19:30, and Lucrecia Aguilar to a fast 1,2,3 team finish. Junior Margalit Glasgow was 5th and has been very steady as our 4th running in 20:50. New sophomore Matia Whiting is gaining experience and confidence with each race and she rounded out the scoring in 9th overall in 21:17. Junior Yasmine Hashemi was right behind in 21:20. Team captain Emily Caggiano was 11th in 21:39.
New comer, Junior Lizzie Fineman, has improved a great deal in a short time and she ran as our 7th and finished in 13th ahead of the top scorer for Wayland and also cracking the Westford top 7. Senior team captain Leah Abercrombie placed 14th in 21:46 and Junior Sara Wang gave us 9 girls in the top 14 in 22:09.
Our JV team is also 4-0 with a pair of wins going 15-49 vs Wayland and 16-34 vs Westford. In the years that we have this kind of team depth I call our JV team our 2nd varsity. Our JV team is strong enough to win against some varsity teams in the strongest league in the state and would have a winning record in most leagues in the state. Our JV team often has girls pulled up to fill varsity positions and when kids are ill or injured they do not get replacements. So the JV team in this meet was a bit short handed and you always hope in these kinds of situations that someone will step up. Freshman Annika McGraw showed a great deal of improvement to place 6th as our 5th girl and in doing so she beat the 2nd JV girl from Westford and the top girl from Wayland in a time of 23:50.
Frosh Caraline Pham won her 4th JV race in 22:27 followed by junior Leah Jacobson - 23:05, sophomore Caroline Delheim - 23:17, Louisa Kimmell in 23:31. Louisa is one of our most improved girls and I was excited as her coach to see her in front of the top JV girl from the other teams as she is very dedicated. Caraline Pham has good instincts for a runner new to high school and has been very convincing in her wins. All of the JV girls stepped up and ran great races on the toughest course in the DCL. Sophomore Audrey Hooker was13th in a best time of 26:04, frosh Amelia Stern was 14th - 26:15 and Ksenia Ptapov rounded out our team with a nice effort in 29:42.
Amherst Invitational 9/22/2012
We had a positive showing at the Amherst Invitational on Saturday finishing 4th out of a field of 21 teams in which 7 teams came into the meet ranked in the top 20 in the state.
Amherst won the meet with 99 points. Then came a blanket finish with Needham placing 2nd with 139, Notre Dame (Hingham) was 3rd with 145 to our 146. I felt good about the outcome as Margalit was absent due to an approved academic reason and she had been running as our 4th at the point in the season. So to come so close to being in the the top two in this field and being a bit short handed was a good outcome which also signals new kids stepping up. We also were able to beat out Central MA power Wachusett and Eastern MA power Haverhill. Those are very meaningful teams to beat.
What I like most about the race is that we had 3 girls break 19:40 which bodes well for the future and also two more break 21:00 this early and another pair right behind in 21:08. Our team is showing good depth as well as strong front running.
The headline has to be that freshman Rebecca Grusby is now 10th on our all time list placing 7th in 18:54 over 5K. We keep three Honor Rolls for NSXC. The black list is now at 60 girls that have broken 21 minutes in a 5K cross country race. The Orange list now has 30 girls under 20 minutes and that list is very difficult to make. Our Blue list is filled with All Americans and state champions and only includes 12 athletes over our storied history. Freshman Rebecca Grusby now sits 10th on our blue list in 18:54 just behind 4 x All American Melanie Fineman who won the Division I mile and placed 2nd in All State. I have never had a girl debut onto the Blue list in her first varsity 5K before. Given how many special athletes that we have had over the years that is truly amazing.
To be fair the Amherst course is faster than most, but it is a true measured 5k distance.
What I like about Rebecca is that she just loves to race. She takes it all in stride and is having fun. My job as her coach is to make sure that she keeps having fun.
Next we had a pair tying their PRs. Anna Rhatigan ran her exact PR racing to 19:05 and Lucrecia did the same in 19:32. That is a very strong 1,2,3 punch.
Sophomore Matia became the 60th girl in school history to break 21:00 minutes racing to 54 place out of 143 runners in a PR of 20:52. When you consider that in the past 21 years our program has averaged having about 30 girls a year on our team that number would add up to 630 runners or so. Only the top 10 per cent of girls that have come out for our team have broken 21:00. So that is a worthy achievement.
Captain Emily Caggiano rounded out our top 5 scoring in 20:59 and captain Leah Abercrombie placed 63 in 21:08 and junior Yasmine Hashemi was one place back in the same time as Leah.
Junior Sara Wang ran a stellar PR in 21:23 to take 2nd in the JV race. Junior Lizzie Fineman also ran a PR in 21:34 to take 4th in the JV field of 205 runners as our JV team finished 2nd. Freshman Caraline Pham finished 8th in a PR of 22:09 and Caroline Delheim ran to a large improvement finishing 10th in 22:11 to lead our JV team to a 2nd place finish out of 16 teams.
Newton South vs Concord - Carlisle and Lincoln-Subbury 9/27/2012
Going into this meet I felt that our best chance to win against either team was to go 1,2,3 which by itself be enough to win. Unfortunately, Anna Rhatigan was ill and we simply could not afford to be short handed up front against two of the very best teams in the state. Both teams beat us by a score of 24-37. Had Anna run any of the races that she has this season the meet against each team would have been a 1 or 2 point meet. So we are now 4-2 as a team going into AB on Wed.
Rebecca Grusby ran a super fast time over the 2.75 mile LS course to win in 16:42.
Lucrecia Aguilar was just behind the first girls of both teams finishing 4th in 17:06 which is also a stellar time. After that LS and CC took advantage of our gap to our 3rd runner and beat us on depth. We had decent packing and would have been fine in most other meets, but our pack was running behind the packing of the other two teams. We got off to a slow start and these two teams know how to close and do not give up ground over the 2nd half of any race. Yasmine Hashemi was 20th 18:43, Leah Abercrombie 18:48, Margalit Glasgow 18:56, Matia Whiting 19:13 and Emily Caggiano in 19:30.
A bright spot for us was Lizzie Fineman winning the JV race in 18:54 which would have put her as our 4th runner in the varsity race. Sara Wang took 4th in the JV race in 19:04 and would have been in our top 6.
My feeling is that we weathered a tough stretch racing a tough course at Wayland followed by Amherst and then the LS-CC meet all in a weeks time.
Frank Kelley Invitational - Wrentham Developmental Center 9/29/2012
We choose to go to this invitational because it is run over the course that is now the one that the Division I Eastern MA championship will be decided on as well as the qualifier for the All State meet. I felt we had to get our girls onto the course. I split our varsity and allowed Emily, Matia, Yasmine and Leah to do a workout over the course before the races got started.
Anna Rhatigan was going to join them, but was still sick. So my feeling is that these girls got to know the feel of the course in a meaningful way, but could rest mentally for our meet against AB on Wednesday which should be a great test of our depth.
I entered Rebecca in the Division I - 9th grade race to give her a break from the longer distance and also the pressure of varsity competition. She continues to be a bouncy fun loving highlight reel as she took on the number one girl from the Whitman-Hanson team that is ranked #1 in the All State rankings. Rebecca’s winning time of 11:13 for for 1.9 miles is her best race of the season and is a 9th grade school record and won by 36 seconds. The winner of the Division II 9th grade race ran 11:52.
Freshman Samantha Coletti of Whitman-Hanson is one of the fastest girls in the state and has been winning every race that she runs. Colettie rocketed to the lead in a first 400 that looked to be nearer to 5 minute pace than 5:20 mile pace and Rebecca and a girl from Brockton who did not finish in the top 50 followed her from about 5 meters back.
Going in I knew that Colletti was very good, but I also felt that Rebecca could handle the one on one match up well. Rebecca shadowed her from about 5 meters back through a fast first 1/2 mile which was cagey racing for runners of any experience level. At this point the race passed by me and I yelled at Rebecca to close the gap and she did just that in a very short distance. I am not sure if she heard me or not or just had the same idea, but she moved up with real ease. At the mile she took off and the race was over as she honestly looked like she was picking up more speed over the 2nd half of the course and she opened up a 36 second gap over less than a mile. This was a very nice win for Rebecca. Caraline Pham also ran a super race finishing 14th in 12:54.
I feel that our varsity team is much deeper than the top 7 and the girls proved this. I had 6 members of our varsity do a workout over the course, sit out or run in the 9th grade race and all for reasons that will help our team in the future. So we fielded 5 girls that belonged in the varsity race and they represented us well. Lucrecia and Margalit have each missed a race earlier in the season so I wanted to give them the chance to race. Lucrecia was in the front group throughout the race and placed 14th in 19:51. Lucrecia has had nothing but good races meet in and meet out and she ran well once again. Margalit ran a solid race in 21:34 and moved up over the entire course which is her trade mark.
Lizzie Fineman has not put in very many miles as a distance runner, but she knows how to compete and with her limited background in the sport she now looks like she can really help us at the state level as a scorer. She placed as our 2nd in 21:21 scoring 65th out of 189 runners. That is two stellar races for her in a row and she will now be a fixture on our varsity.
Sara was a top runner on our jv team last year and she has willed her way onto our varsity. She set a 5K PR of 21:57 and looked strong scoring 91st. Caroline Delheim got to run in her first varsity race and she made the most of it scoring 114th in a 5K PR of 22:39.
Leah Jacobson placed 31st in the JV race in 23:19 and Sarina Weiss was close behind in 23:47.
We had a number of other girls running in their first invitational and I include their efforts when I say that I was proud of our entire team. We had a day to be proud of.
