Mainland’s Day, Lovett take first two places in heavy winds, whipping rain
OCEAN CITY – The Ocean City and Mainland Regional girls cross country teams are evenly matched.
The Red Raider girls won the Varsity C division at the Shore Coaches Invitational Oct. 1 and the Mainland Regional girls took fourth place in the Varsity B division.
Despite being in different divisions, an interesting fact is the average time for the Ocean City runners in that race was 21 minutes and 12 seconds. The average time for the Mainland girls was 21 minutes and 9 seconds, a wee bit faster.
That closeness in performance was evident again on Tuesday, Oct. 4, in the wind and rain on the Ocean City cross country course that includes the boardwalk and north end of town. The race usually includes the beach, but it was high tide and a lot of the beach was washed away.
The first two girls who finished last week’s race were Mustangs – Sofia Day in first place in 18:43 and Gillian Lovett second in 18:54. (At the Shore race at the tough, hilly course in Holmdel, Lovett bested Day by 25 seconds, attesting to the one-two punch for the Mainland girls.)
After those two, Ocean City put three girls across the finish line in third, fourth and fifth places – Chloe Care (19:55), Maeve Smith (20:00) and Frankie Ritzel (20:27). Mainland’s Claudia Booth was sixth in 20:48, and then a whole passel of Red Raiders finished: Liv Palmieri in seventh (20:54), Gabby Henry in eighth (21:07), Abby Inserra in ninth (21:08) and Cheryl Connell in 10th (21.11).
That strong pack offset the top two finishers to give Ocean City the 27-32 victory, allowing the Red Raiders to remain unbeaten at 6-0 and handing the Mustangs their first loss, putting them at 5-1 in dual meets this season.
Girls see how good they can be
“The girls were ready. They were coming with their momentum from Holmdel,” Ocean City coach Tim Cook said. “They were just hoping the race was going to happen (today). They didn’t want to cancel it. They didn’t want to move it. They were ready to run. I’m happy we got it done.”
Cook added that he saw an article from South Jersey track coaches that the team won the Shore Coaches Invitational in 1983, 1993 and 1994. “I don’t think the girls thought they could win it. They were a little unsure, but I kept telling them, ‘Run your race like you have been’ and they won it as a team.’”
Cook happily noted his team was ranked 10th in the state last week.
He said the girls had the shortest split for runners one through five in Group C and the second fastest in the entire meet of six groups. “The biggest thing that came out of it was when they did the whole team merge, we were ninth out of a hundred-something teams when they put all the races together,” Cook said. “They finally saw a little light of how good they can be when they work together. It’s been fun.”
He was pleased with the win Oct. 4. “They ran well today and I’m happy we could get it in. It’s always fun to go against Mainland. Set the stage – crazy rain, crazy winds, but we got it done.”
Cook said the team has good senior leadership in Grace McAfee, Inserra, Palmieri and Connell, “who’ve been running for years. “Chloe Care has been doing a great job as a sophomore, really leading us. Really, Across the board, we have seven or eight girls who play a part and all support each other.” Indicative of that, he said, was that as the rain and wind intensified as the meet wore down, all of the girls waited at the finish line until their last runner finished, before heading for shelter.
The Red Raiders had a quad meet Tuesday to finish up the regular season and then head into the Cape May County meet followed by the Cape-Atlantic League meet, where they’ll see Mainland again.
“We’re getting into the championship part of the season, which is a little bit more fun,” Cook said. “They’re excited. They’re seeing how good they can be, which is nice for me.”
Mustang girls just need to close gap
“I think we’re doing pretty well. I’m happy with the effort that we’re giving,” Mainland coach Brian Smith said.”We have a talented squad and the girls are working hard. We have had a few bumps and bruises here in the early going that every team works through, but the girls are competing. They’re in it to give their best.”
“Ocean City is a great squad. They got the best of us today. They ran tremendously well on Saturday at the Shore Coaches so we know the work that we have to do. We see what we have in front of us and it gives us something to work toward,” he said.
“The girls are driven and they’re feeling good, for the most part, but we have work to do,” Smith said. “That gives us a goal of something to work toward.”
Day and Lovett, he said, “have been our standard-bearers all year. They’ve been going back and forth, alternating first and second. Gillian ran a great race on Saturday at the Shore Coaches. She had the 15th fastest time of the entire day among the girls. Sofia came back today and ran a great race so we have a tremendous one-two.
“We just have to close that gap between our three-four-five to make it more competitive here,” he said. “We’re looking forward to the challenge. We have six weeks left. Hopefully we’ll get some better weather than this.
“We’re feeling good, feeling positive and we’ll give it our best the rest of the season.”
By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff
