Once again, both cross-country teams have had extremely successful seasons. The girl’s team completed their season with a record of 11-3 and were led by senior captains Casey Bleistine and Morgan Gares.

Three great accomplishments by the girls, as noted by Coach Guscott, are winning the Holy Cross Challenge cup, winning the South Jersey Open Meet (for the first time since 1998), and qualifying for the state meet as a team by finishing third at sectionals.  The girls won the South Jersey Open Meet when they defeated Pitman, a team who came back to avenge their second-place SJ Open finishing by nudging our girls from second to third place at sectionals.

Casey Bleistine took her role as captain very seriously this year.  When asked about her role as a captain and keeping everyone together, Casey explained, “Basically the whole thing is positivity. You have to tell yourself you can do it the whole time.”

One bright spot is that the top three runners on the team are all underclassmen – freshmen Haley Adams and Anne O’Malley along with junior Olivia Rocks.  Adams is a freshman and is the top runner on the team, placing third in the South Jersey Group 2 sectional.  Haley’s finish is tied for the highest finish for a freshman on the team since Meghan Malloy accomplished the same feat in 2009.

Haley says that she does not focus so much on her own score, it is all about how well the team does, “if we make it through, we can get to way more meets, and we could get jackets.”

Last Saturday, Haley went to the NJ State Championships finished eighth overall, qualifying her for this weekend’s Meet of Champions.  Because she qualified as an individual, Haley will be running without her teammates this weekend as an at-large runner, but she’ll enter the race as the twelfth-best freshman runner in the entire state of New Jersey.

The boys ended their season with an impressive record of 12-2. They won the Patriot Division by going 4-0 in the divisional meets throughout the season. Sophomore Mike Ungvarsky was the most impressive runner for the boys this season, qualifying for the state meet that took place last week, Saturday, November 15 by finishing eighth at sectionals, a ten-place improvement on his 18^th-place finish as a freshman in 2013.

At the state championships last weekend, Ungvarsky had a banner day, finishing seventh overall and becoming Cinnaminson’s first boy’s individual cross country Meet of Champions qualifier since Todd Campbell in 2008.  Ungvarsky finished the race among the top-20 in state among sophomores.

Although cross-country may be thought of as a personal sport- always trying to better yourself and improve your time, Senior Wyatt Holl points out how it is not all personal, “The thing is, when it comes to scoring, you score as a team.” Wyatt has been on the team his whole high school career and he says that this season is different from any other.

Wyatt explained that all of the boys get along really well, “It’s a good time, and everyone definitely became closer throughout the season.” He says that a lot of his love for the sport comes from his appreciation for his coaches, “I personally believe that Coach Fourney and Coach Callinan are the two best coaches in our school, they work all of us tremendously hard and they want to make sure we succeed.”