Pirates XC faster at New World Fall Spectacular

The coaches of the boys and girls Pirate cross coun-try teams insisted it was not hyperbole. Both the name of the meet and the teams’ performances last Saturday were “spectacular.”

Perhaps New World Fall Spectacular race director Richard Fannin deliberately chose that name for the meet to help inspire the 72 schools entering the six separate races. If not, the date near the end of the sea-son was a definite choice to, hopefully, provide a cooler day for faster times. Despite what Fannin called a “soft” course with one “shoe-sucking” muddy patch because of the heavy rains on Thursday, the best temperature of the season more than evened out the course conditions.

The Pirates entered 28 runners in three separate divisions — girls elite, girls JV elite and boys open.  Twenty Pirates set all-time personal records, the best times they have ever run on any type course and under any kind of conditions. Eight of the 10 Lady Pirates whom Coach Dave Reinhart entered in the girls elite race set PRs while two had season bests (SBs). In the girls JV elite race, five of the eight runners set PRs.

Coach Bill Beaumont had seven of his 10 runners set PRs in the boys open race. Asked for explanations, Beaumont replied, “We opened our season here on Aug. 28. Temperatures were in the mid 80s under a bright sun. Today, temps were in the low 70s and it was cloudy.” Echoed Reinhart, “Yes that certainly was significant. But both teams have been training progressively harder and faster. Our workouts have shown we are in better shape. Until today, we just haven’t had this kind of racing weather to prove it.” Junior Jack Wetherhill got one of those new PRs, thanks to a big 50-second improvement.

“It was a difficult, tiring and challenging effort,” he said. He admitted, how-ever, that cheers from his folks and girlfriend, Natalie Ramsey, sister of teammate Jimmy Ramsey, deserve lots of credit.  

Leading the Pirates to 17th place out of 29 teams was captain Keaton DeVaul in 18:09 and 22nd place out of 284 finishers. Replying to a question about course conditions, DeVaul said, “Both times we hit the muddy area, I had to slow down or maybe lose a shoe  I did drop my PR by 10 seconds. I suspect the mud cost me the other 10 seconds I needed to reach my goal of getting into the 17:00s.”  

Vincent Drakus finished 1:55 later in a time of 20:04 with No. 3 man Wetherhill just six seconds behind in 20:10. Drakus was just eight seconds over his PR. Adian Newsome was next in 21:12, but four seconds off his PR. Alex Breitenstein com-pleted the scoring in 21:25, a 37-second PR.

Non-scorers Matti Scruggs (one- PR), Jimmy Ramsay, whose sister Natalie cheered for him, too, took 26 seconds off his PR. Sawyer Gammon was No. 8 man off his PR with a time of 23:42. Brennen Augustine’s time of 24:34 was a big 49-second PR, closely followed one second later by Sam Blake with a PR of 37 seconds. Beaumont summed up his team’s day with, “Great that seven out of 10 guys had PRs and we managed 17th against all classes of schools. We were, however, without our usual No. 3 run-er, Dominic Snead.  He’s recovering from some shin splint problems. We’ll need him fully recovered by Oct. 30 in order to advance out of the district meet to the regionals.” Out of those 72 teams at the meet, the girls elite race featured the 30 highest ranked teams. The Lady Pirates’ much-improved times paid off with an 11th place finish. Of those 30 teams, just class 1A McClay in first place and 2A Episcopal in fourth beat the class 2A Lady Pirates.

Commented assistant coach Melanie Wright, “These big invitational meets are great prep for us.  We like to go toe to toe with the big 3A and 4A schools. It builds our confidence before we compete with just our size schools in the district, regional and state championships.”  

Once again, it took a time gap of just 64 seconds between the first five girls who scored for the team.  Against a field of 252 runners, Mikaela Nichols finished 37th in 20:02, a PR of 42 seconds; Laura Quinn ran 20:18, PR of 31 seconds; Callie Nesbitt was 20:27, new PR of 40 sec-onds; Adalai Kwaitkowski had a 21:07 for a 31-second PR; and Grace Scuderi ran 21:11, a 17-second PR.  

Non-scoring harriers Emma Gunn and Aislinn Bell continued to post fast times. Gunn was timed in 21:45 for a 43-second PR, a nice breakthrough after running a hard-to-imagine four straight races within one second of 22:29. Her one-word reaction said it all, “Finally!”

Senior co-captain Bell continued her steady improvement, adding significantly to the depth of the team with a SB of 21 sec-onds. Emma Barone (64-second PR), Kate Chenoweth (12-second PR) and Julianna Ferus (five-second SB) filled in the last three spots of Pirate entries.

Lady Pirates in the elite JV race finished 10th of 17 schools. Ninth-grader  Kiera Michalski finished in 23:22 for an 18-second PR. Chloe Herd’s PR was a 70-second improvement. Bo Gatti was next in 25:20. Elizabeth Smith had her best race of the season with a whopping 5:06 PR. Sevina Contreras also had a big 3:11 PR. Gisele Le’s PR was 69 seconds faster. Emma Hayes completed the team’s placing in yet another good 2:39 PR.  

The story of the day had to involve, of course, the spot of shoe-sucking mud. Adalai Kwaitkowski lost one of hers there. Ignoring her coach’s pleas at the mile mark, the 1.5- and two-mile splits to stop, she yanked off the other shoe, tiptoed over stretches of old asphalt cart paths, stony parts of the trail and still managed to set a new PR.

Tongue-in-cheek, she claimed, “I was so focused on my feet, I never heard a word about stopping.” Her feet probably wished she had better hearing.  

Enjoying a good day at the race track, Reinhart commented, “It was great that the girls got to validate the progress that has been sort of hidden from them.  All the PRs and SBs are a nice payoff for all the train-ing they’ve done since June.  Now we know we’re on the right path to meet our team goals as we peak for the championship season.”  

The Pirates hosted the Nassau County championships on Wednesday. Results will appear in Wednesday’s edition.