JAMESBURG, NJ - Just a couple of days after the NY/NJ area saw several tornadoes rip through the area, (that’s right, tornadoes!) the morning started out cool with lots of cloud cover. It was in the high 60s when the meet began at 10:00am with the senior boys towing the line at Thompson Park in Jamesburg, NJ followed by the senior girls 20 minutes later. Thompson Park is the course where the central jersey sectionals will be held on November 6th, so many teams that were here today were getting a preview of the course for that day.
Team scoring for the meet today was for three athletes in each race so only teams with at least three athletes in a given race were scored. The top 35 finishers were awarded medals.
In the senior boys race, we saw the Old Bridge team win it using teamwork and finishing 6th, 7th and 8th (Mike Stetson, Shawn Burke, and Alex Leight) while North Brunswick took third in team scoring despite having their first two runners finish 1-3 (Cullen Davis and Kyle Davis). Cullen Davis finished the course in 15:56.41 for the win. The senior girls race was won by Jenna Dubrow of Jackson Memorial in a time of 19:20.29 and Jackson Memorial also took the team title placing runners in 1st, 6th, and 16th overall. Dubrow’s win was a battle that lasted throughout the entire race, finishing up with only a 3 second margin over Caroline Ticse of Allentown HS (19:23.70).
The junior boys race was a matter of Joe Capolino of Old Bridge and then everyone else. He led from the first loop at the mile marker and was really never challenged. His time was 17:30.48. Justin Diamond of Wayne Hills was second with a 17:47.17 and Skylar Johnson of Point Pleasant Boro finished 3rd as the only other junior under 18 minutes with an 17:55. Wayne Hills won the junior boys team race, followed by Old Bridge and then Dickinson in 3rd. For the Junior girls, Brianna Feerst of Point Beach followed up her strong dual meet performance from a dual meet this week at Holmdel with a win today. She was going back and forth with Ashley Carle of Jackson Memorial for the first half of the race, but then pulled away in the woods to win in 19:19.09 to Carle’s 20:03.35. The team title went to Raritan though who managed to get their three runners in the top ten finishing 6, 7 and 9 overall. Second place went to Jackson Memorial and Point Pleasant Boro manged to get third.
The sophomore boys race was dominated by the Old Bridge team who not only finished 1-2-3 (Ryan Colon, Taylor Casserly and Nick Price) but had 3 more runners finish in the top 13, with two more sophomores finishing 20 and 21. Point Pleasant Boro finished 2nd in the team scoring while Allentown took 3rd. The girls sophomore race saw just one girl dip under 20 minutes as Lennon Cooper won it in 19:57.99 and also led her team to a team title over Immaculate Heart while the extremely deep Manasquan team took 3rd in this race.
Finally, in the boys frosh race it was… that’s right you guessed it, Old Bridge again. They had 3rd, 4th and 5th, 13th and 14th overall to make for 3 boys team titles and one second place today. The winner in this race was Brendan Ungemach of Wayne Hills. 2nd place went to Sam Haber of Point Pleasant Boro while third went to Andrew Tupper of Old Bridge. On the girls side, an early dual between Anne Skimmons of Point Pleasant Boro and Ariana Nash of Jackson Memorial was eventually won by Skimmons who came out of the woods at the end nearly 30 seconds ahead of a hard charging Nash. Third place went to Lindsay Lucas of Paramus. There was some question about whether or not the girls frosh race followed the correct path to the end of the first straightaway but everyone was still in a tight pack at that point so they all ran the same distance. Jackson Memorial took the freshman team title, Immaculate heart got second and third place went to Point Pleasant Boro.