On September 11th, 2019, the South Jersey Track Coaches Association announced their 1st SJTCA Cross Country Team Rankings for the season and, with nothing more than a lot of talk, Cherokee was named # 1 on their list, followed by Haddonfield, Kingsway, Ocean City and Cherry Hill East. See weekly list at SJTCA. Several teams raced decently this past weekend, while Cherokee's Varsity trained through the weekend, so the rankings may change on their # 2 list. Cherokee's first opportunity to make a concrete statement on the rankings will be at the Shore Coaches Invitational on October 5th. Stay tuned! GO CHEROKEE!
On September 17th, 2019, most of Cherokee's Junior Varsity and Freshmen took a run in the park, DREAM Park that is, at the Olympic Conference Batch Meet # 1. While some teams actually race at the Batch Meets, Coach Shaklee prefers to use them as workouts and, in this one, he asked the team to run at "threshold pace."
Some official details on the run at: NJ.MileSplit.
Our photographer moved about during the run and, at one time, he thought he might have entered a kind of Jurassic Park when two fairly old dinosaurs passed by his camera:
The rest of the day was fairly normal:
On September 18th, 2019, the South Jersey Track Coaches Association announced their SJTCA Cross Country Team Rankings # 2 -- ya think they waited to see the outcome of the 1st Batch Meet? . . . nah -- and once again, based largely on the reputations of the coaches and the returning athletes, Cherokee was selected 1st on the list! They were followed by Haddonfield, Kingsway, Cherry Hill East and Ocean City. Again, the first real test comes at Shore Coaches on October 5th! GO CHEROKEE! List at SJ Track.
On September 18th, 2019, NJ.MileSplit announced their NJ.MileSplit Boys NJ Cross Country Team Rankings # 2 and, this time, moved The Chiefs from 3rd to 2nd place on the list! Last week, Westfield was 2nd on the list but they dropped to 3rd because Cherokee beat Westfield on the "merged results" at the Cherokee Challenge. Again, most of the ranking is based on reputation not performance! Hmmm, maybe Cherokee will still be ranked 2nd if they avoid 5K competition until November? Just thinkin' . . .. The list continues to rank Haddonfield in 4th and Cherry Hill East in 10th. GO CHEROKEE! Details at: NJ.MileSplit.
On September 20th, 2019, the team began its annual weekend journey to an out-of-state and largely unknown Cross Country event and this year it was to the RVA Relays in Mechanicsville, Virginia. This event seemed especially intriguing because of its set-up. Multiple races but the highlight is a "Championship Relay" of 5 X 2500m run in the evening under the lights! That convinced our photographer to bag it but the pictures are already coming in! Coach Shaklee sent several shots of wildly excited young people from their first feeding hole: Vinny's Italian Grille in Stafford, VA! GO CHEROKEE!
For years now, and certainly when the team stayed overnight for the big state meets at Holmdel, the Olive Garden was the place to dine! On this trip, however, they chose Vinny's Italian Grille in Stafford, VA . . . only 10 miles up the road from the Fredericksburg Olive Garden! Go figure! Former History teacher, Coach Shaklee probably wanted to stop by the great battlefields of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville (where the rebels got lucky) but they moved on to their hotel about an hour down the road to settle in for the night.
Coach Shaklee sent these comments on the meet:
"The team traveled to Virginia for the RVA Relays, a meet that has each team entering up to three 5-man teams with each runner covering 2500 meters before handing off. Those not among the fifteen in the three relays, ran in the first of two Open Races (also 2500 meters).
It was a mixed bag for the team as some raced well and others not so well. Of course, with Brett Shea and Dylan Odud out with injury, it weakened our line-up for all three teams.
Our first race was the B & C team competition which went off at 4:30 while the temperature was at 89 with bright sunshine and absolutely no shade. The B Team of Danny Boria, Matt Campbell, Dom Gazzara, Joe Natoli and Bobby Hackney finished 3rd with Danny, Matt and Bobby all spliting under 8:00 (Bobby the fastest at 7:54)! The C Team of Tommy Bromley, Connor Jacob, Jameson Crozier, Ben Hackney and Bryan Lafferty finished 24th (overall) but were the 5th "C Team" across the line! The three Freshmen seemed a little overwhelmed and didn't race quite as well as they have previously. They are still adjusting to racing at the high school level and will continue to improve as they become accustomed to the level of competition they now face. Jameson and Bryan both ran well, both splitting under 8:30 to lead the team!
The Open Race was next and the team was able to place four runners among the top twenty finishers, led by Milo Barkow's strong performance. He ran aggressively and held on at the end to finish 9th. His time was only one second behind Bryan's from the C race and faster than the other 4 C-race runners! Behind him, Lucas Hatch was 13th, Bradley Popler, 16th and Kevin Hess, 20th.
The Championship Race was a dogfight between Cherokee and Virginia power, Deep Run High School. Although we were very close to the meet record, we lost the battle with Deep Run on a lean at the line. Ethan Wechsler, running his first meet of the year, ran a strong anchor to tie the meet's fastest time and the meet record of 7:00! Chase Miller split 7:17 which tied for the 3rd fastest split! The other splits for Cherokee were: Nico Grilli, 7:28; Ty Jackson, 7:31; and Mike Gavio, 7:40."
In addition to the high school competition, the meet offered the oddly-named Glow Run, a 2500m race for coaches and other competitors, and Coach Thompson took up the challenge! The Coach took 7th/68 overall in the race! Some were confused by the finish line timing which showed a huge gap of 39 seconds between the 6th finisher and Coach Thompson! One observer suggested he got lost in the dark. Our investigator is on the story and will report on this later!
Next week is a week off from racing (except for several guys who will run Tuesday's Batch Meet) with the next competition coming October 5th at the all-important Shore Coaches Invitational.
The coaches selected Milo Barkow as the Runner of the Meet, highlighting his strong performance throughout the race! He went out aggressively and he held on and finished well! GO MILO!
Details at: VA.MileSplit.
Our photographer reported that Virginia, MileSplit posted over 3,300 pictures from the meet but they are among the worst ever posted on a MileSplit site! Using PhotoShop, he tried to salvage as many pictures as he could but, as his sweet mother used to say, "You can't polish a turd." Except for this team picture, here are some that he found and tried to save:
On September 24th, 2019, most of the JV and Freshmen members of the team traveled to DREAM Park for the Olympic Conference Batch Meet # 2, and, although Coach Shaklee wanted a number of the guys to run the race aggressively, the meet was used mostly for training.
That said, it was mostly a training session for the other teams in the Conference as well and bragging too much about results would be just a tad "over the top." Still, the coach pointed out that five of the first ten, and seven of the first sixteen finishers, were from Cherokee . . . and four of them were Freshmen! And would it be amiss to mention that Conor Jacob, Tom Bradley and Ben Hackney all ran major PR's over their previous 5K's on the course? Nah . . ..
Details at: NJ.MileSplit.
Our photographer was there and got some nice stuff but, while we wait for his work, see if you can identify the Cherokee owner of these unlaced shoes that were pictured only about 200m into the race! (Since tying shoelaces is largely a scientific endeavor associated with Physics, Coach Thompson is preparing a shoelace-tying lesson for Saturday's practice.)
On September 25th, 2019, NJ.MileSplit announced their NJ.MileSplit Boys NJ Cross Country Team Rankings # 3 and, this time, kept The Chiefs in 2nd place on the list! This has been said before but it needs reinforcement: most of the ranking is based on reputation not performance! Yes, there was a short comment on RVA but no real evaluation. Reality arrivies in less than two weeks when practically the entire state meets at Holmdel for the Shore Coaches Invitational! The list continues to rank Haddonfield in 3rd and, in a change, dropped Cherry Hill East out of the top Ten, replacing them with Ocean City! GO CHEROKEE!
Details at: NJ.MileSplit.
On September 25th, 2019, the South Jersey Track Coaches Association announced their SJTCA Cross Country Team Rankings # 3 -- do ya think they saw those Freshmen in Batch Meet # 2? -- and once again, based largely on the reputations of the coaches and the returning athletes, Cherokee was selected 1st on the list! The 2nd through 5th list changed a tad since last week: from Haddonfield, Kingsway, Cherry Hill East and Ocean City to Haddonfield Cherry Hill East, Kingsway and Ocean City. Again, the first real test comes at Shore Coaches on October 5th! GO CHEROKEE!
List at SJ Track.