Racing for Victory

By Liz Haas

The season has started off well for the Hanover Cross Country team. The Boys ‘Varsity team only lost one runner to graduation -Nat Lowrey- and the girls lost two of their top seven runners: Leah Eickhoff and Emily Nice. The team also gained a host of new freshmen and a few new upperclassmen, increasing their numbers to over eighty participants. New arrivals include current number seven Varsity runner Charlotte Sargent and Jack Siegel, who alternates between Boys’ Varsity and Junior Varsity. Another new face is Coach Dorcas Wonsavage, who has joined Head Coach Jim Eakin and Assistant Coach Eric Picconi in leading the team after Mr. Crane retired from coaching last year. Altogether the team is looking strong, in contrast to last year, when half of the Girls Varsity team began the season either sick or injured.

The Marauders slaughtered at their first invitational at Great Glen: the JV Girls team, led by Charlotte Sargent, finished one, two, three, four, five, starting off the day with a win at a perfect score of fifteen points. The sweep continued with the JV Boys taking first. The Varsity Girls team followed, taking first among the Division One teams and also overall, with runners Liz Haas, Krista Brown, Lydia Vogt, Aidan Bardos, Lucy Skinner, and Parker Goss finishing in the top 15 and Charlotte Cadow finishing in the top 25. Rounding out the day, the Varsity Boys team, led by junior Noah Williams, placed first among the Division I teams.

The key to the Girls’ Varsity team’s success is the extreme depth and ability it possessed to finish its top six runners with less than one minute between numbers one and six. Thanks to this grouping, they have qualified to compete in the elite race at the Manchester Invitational and to travel to Brown University on October 15 to run against the top high school teams in New England.

The Boys’ Varsity team has a tight grouping as well, though slightly different from that of the girls. Varsity runners five, six, and seven and JV runners one and two have very similar times. This pushes the athletes to their fullest as they attempt to outrun each other and secure their places on Varsity. Thus, the Varsity and JV teams continue to change race to race, pushing the boys to improve or get dropped.

With both teams performing well, it will be interesting to see how they line up against the other Division II teams at States on October 29. If each athlete on both of the teams continues to improve, then a Hanover sweep at States is within the realm of possibility.