By OLIVER CORPUS
Staff Writer
Cross Country finished #5 out of 17 teams in their division at their first meet of the year on Saturday, September 9th. Although many upperclassmen were missing due to the ACT being on the same day, the freshmen and sophomore runners both did well.
The Varsity boys also kicked off strongly this season, most notably Ryan Duffy (So.) placing 7th in his race with a time of 17:08 and Nick Choi (So.) placing 9th with a time of 17:15. Duffy finished strong in his race, passing other runners on the final hill before the finish line. Describing the final push at the end, Duffy said,” Two guys came up in front of me, but I broke them up.”
Boys Varsity Captain Christian Go (Sr.), took 15th place in his race with a time of 17:09. In an encouraging speech to the Freshmen boys before the race, Go said,” Don’t let our team mindset hold us back this season”, in order to inspire the new runners to break a mindset that University High School is not especially strong at sports.
The Varsity girls also did well, with Collette Lowengrub (Fr.) finishing 1st in her race with a time of 19:57. Another strong runner, Avery Klauke (So.) secured 4th place in her race with a time of 20:00.
Co-Captain Amir Guity (Sr.) concluded his race with a time of 17:50. Reflecting after the race, Guity said he was “Excited about this season because the team has a lot of underclassmen with high potential and they did an outstanding job today.”
Two of the girl’s captains were not present at the meet, one being Cecilia Langlois (Jr.) who unfortunately was injured and Julie Brom (Sr.) who had to take the ACT. However, the third captain Madeleine Boschen (Sr.) who ran a time of 25:09 was present at the meet.
For many underclassmen and JV boys, it was their first race on a challenging race course. When asked about the difficulty of the course, Henry Feuerborn (Fr.) said, “The upper part of the second hill was tough, but the grind never stops.”
