The Haddonfield girls and Liliah Gordon of Northern Burlington made their presence felt with sensational performances in the Eastern States race at Saturday's 49th Manhattan Invitational on the famed trails of venerable Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx.
Haddonfield, ranked No. 2 in NJ, has had a lot of great races over the years on this 2.5-mile layout, but this was its best ever as the Dawgs averaged a school course record 15:42.8 and had a 1-5 compression of just 35.6 seconds to finish third with 161 points. Assumption finished first with 116 and Bethlehem Central was second with 130. Haddonfield finished ahead of some very strong teams, including US No. 25 ranked Cicero of New York.
The top five for Haddonfield were junior Riley Slootsky, 27th in 15:27, senior Helene Usher, 32nd in 15:32, freshmen Riley Austin, 34th in 15:43, junior Ava Thomas, 35th in 15:44, and junior Audrey Naticchia, 48th in 16:02.
Just how fast was this race for Haddonfield? Well, the entire top five moved into the top 14 on the school's all-time list at Vanny. How do you like that?!!!!
Slootsky is now No. 5 in school history, Usher is No. 6, Austin is No. 7, Thomas is No. 8 and Naticchia is No. 14!!!
As for Gordon, the sophomore at Northern Burlington also sparkled by throwing down the fastest NJ time of the day by running 15:10 to place 12th in the Eastern race. Gordon's time was the 15th fastest time overall among the seven varsity races.
The second fastest NJ time was turned in by junior Shaelan McNally of Paul VI, who won the B Division race in 15:11.8, the 16th fastest time of the day.