The Cross Country program competed in several different meets this weekend to close out September. The top varsity and junior high teams ran in City Park at the Holy Cross/Dominican Invitational and the inaugural Sugar Bowl Cross Country Classic.
Our junior high harriers set the tone in City Park by winning the Holy Cross/Dominican Invitational over Jesuit 20-39.
These guys dominated the field placing five runners in the top 10. Overall champion, Mason Appleton, ran 11:08 for 2 miles to lead the Crusaders. Victor Garcia, Evan Starring, Gary Sandrock, and Kyle Gleason charged through the finish in 2nd, 4th, 7th, and 8th respectively to round out the scoring.
After conditioned and warmed up even more, the varsity toed the line in the Sugar Bowl meet. This meet featured strong metro area competition from Holy Cross and St. Paul’s. Even with a couple of our top runners getting a weekend off from racing, the team still finished 3rd only 19 points behind meet champion, Holy Cross, and only 8 points behind St. Paul’s. Highlighting the race for our team was a 1-2 finish from Hunter Appleton and Hayden Courrege’.
Meanwhile, in Baton Rouge at the St. Joseph’s Invitational, our next wave of runners took advantage of key opportunities to step up their performances and show folks the depth of the program. Finishing 12th out of 40 teams, our varsity team faced off against some of the best teams in the state.
Jackson Anuszkiewicz let the team with freshman, Merritt Pecoraro, who made his 3-mile debut, finishing close behind. Other notable performances from the varsity were Ethan Dupas, Ahmad Wilson, and Abe Bernstein. These guys ran season bests if not personal records.
The junior high race in Baton Rouge proved to be a tough challenge for our guys, but many of them saw great improvements to finish 10th as a team. Scoring for this young but talented group were Bailey Heidingsfelder, Evan DeCastro, Eddie Randazzo, Dylan Rodriguez, and Austin Hebert.
The entire program will be in Baton Rouge this weekend at the highly competitive Catholic High Invitational.
Congrats, Crusaders
