Red Raider boys go 1-2-3 at county
CAPE MAY COURT HOUSE – Ocean City High School senior Owen Ritti led a 1-2-3 sweep of the first three places at Friday’s Cape May County Boys Cross Country Championships at Cape May County Park.
Red Raider teammates finished eighth through 11th as well to win the team title with 23 points.
Lower Cape May Regional was second with 59 points, Wildwood was third with 81 points, Middle Township fourth with 94 and Cape May County Tech fifth with 111.
Ritti won the race with a time of 16:08.36 as head coach Matt Purdue said the team is peaking at the right time. This week is the Cape-Atlantic League Championships followed by South Jersey sectionals and then states.
“It’s great to be back at a meet here. We had a dual meet here last year, which was nice, but we always enjoy running the county course,” Purdue said. “It’s such a fast, flat course, and we knew this year it was going to be a very competitive meet and that Lower was having a tremendous season and was undefeated and that Wildwood’s (Jorge) Cruz was a top-tier runner.
“We geared up for this and really tried to get everybody peaking today,” he added..
“I think it may have been (Ritti’s) fastest time yet. I have to check, but it’s close to it. He really ran well and pulled his two teammates, Nick (Scarangelli) and Chris (Sardy), with him. They weren’t too far behind. We had a little gap between three and four, but then our fourth, five, six and seven were together so that was good,” Purdue said. “That’s going to be our focus the next couple of weeks, trying to tighten that up and to keep everybody focused and healthy.”
“I thought it was a really good race,” Ritti said. “I was going for a little faster (time) and kind of on the second mile slowed down a little, but I was pretty happy with how I ran today.” The senior said he feels as if his team gets off to a slower start at the beginning of the season, “but build up more and more with mileage and intensity of workout.” He said he believes that helps the team perform better as team gets to the meets “that really matter” such as counties, sectionals and states.
Ritti had to change his strategy mid-race.
“Originally I was going to try to drift off the top people because I knew I wasn’t the top person going into this race,” he said. Then he was going to see how he felt for the second mile. However, it kind of ended up going a different way and I started leading for most of it.”
Looking to the ever-more competitive races in the weeks ahead, Ritti said, “I would really like for our team to come out as sectional champions and CAL champions.”
Ocean City juniors Scarangelli (16:16.92) and Sardy (16:25.45) were second and third.
Wildwood’s Cruz was fourth in 16:28.68, followed by a pair of Lower Cape May Regional runners, Jack Cura, a junior, in 16:30.61, and Zeb Hinker, a senior, in 17:09.18.
Robert Wileczek of Wildwood was seventh in 17:12.42.
In eighth through 11th places were Ocean City’s Nigel Collins (17:18.95), a senior; Matt Hoffman (17:31.09), a sophomore; Colin Abbot (17:33.48), a junior; and Reece Wagner (17:34.88), a senior.
LCMR’s Elijah Jackson, a senior, was 12th in 17:40.17, teammate Jesse Combs, a senior, was 15th in 19:17.86.
Caper Tigers teammates and seniors Sean Murphy (20:48.54) and Nathan Stewart (20:51.68) were 21st and 22nd.
Coach Purdue is expecting a tight race with Mainland Regional at the CAL meet at 3:30 p.m. Thursday at Stockton University. The undefeated Mustangs handed the 10-1 Red Raiders their only loss of the season, beating them by a point.
“I would say Mainland is the favorite at the CAL meet. We obviously had a close race at the dual meet. I think we can race with them and give them a good meet next week and again at the sectionals and hopefully states too,” Purdue said. “I think we have three weeks of battling Mainland. They’re a very good team and I know Lower will be a tough team at the CAL meet. They have a lot of front-end talent. They’re going to be good too.”
The coach said his team is gearing up for the meets this week and the following weeks.
“We have only three seniors so this is a young team for us,”he said. “We’re recruiting and rebuilding, so to speak, with numbers because of the pandemic year we could only race very limited numbers. We couldn’t really develop our JV team last year without any JV races. That wasn’t just hard for us, but for everybody. We really try to progress runners year by year and everything was off-kilter for a bit. This is good to see our JV team running well as well.”
JV teams win
The Ocean City boys and girls junior varsity teams not only won their divisions at the Cape May County Cross Country Championships, but swept all of the top spots as well.
The boys won the top nine spots and the girls took the first 11 places.
Freshman Ethan Buck won the JV race in 17:55.11. Zach Hutchinson, freshman, was second, sophomore Charlie Dunner was third, freshman Tommy Armstrong was fourth, sophomore Matthew Lenko was fifth, freshman Matthew Bell was sixth, junior Ethan Eiler was seventh, freshman Chris Garrabrant was eighth and sophomore Brian Garrabrant was ninth.
For the girls, Abby Inserra won in a time of 21:31.13 and fellow senior Emma Weber was second. Freshmen Gianna Vallese and Zoe Zammit were third and fourth, junior Jennifer Murray was fifth, sophomore Giovanna Barbato was sixth, freshman Faith Pacquing was seventh, junior Ashely Banner was eight, and seniors Alexa Raymond, Isabelle Smith and Abigail Plousis were ninth, 10th and 11th.
By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff
