On October 24th, Cherokee's runners returned to Mill Creek Park (aka. Goose Crap Park) to compete in the Burlington County Open and, as expected, they dominated the event! Jon Anderson of Cinnaminson won the Varsity race but Cherokee's top five took 2nd (Tom Yersak), 3rd (Greg Bredeck), 5th (James Maneval), 9th (Nick Freeman), and 10th (Mike Candy), scoring only 29 points. Maple Shade, the runner-up team, scored 84 points, closely followed by Cinnaminson with 85 points.
Junior Varsity and Freshmen ran in the Open race that followed, with Rich Nelson, Matt Dolan, Will Andes, Vinny Marziano and Steve Brown taking the top five places. Brandon Smith was the first Freshman to finish.
The coaches selected Greg Bredeck as the "Runner of the Meet." Greg took third place overall and second on Cherokee's team in what, Coach Shaklee said, "was yet another in a series of great races."
Reuben Frank of the Burlington County Times looked at the race this way in an article that appeared on Sunday, October 26, 2003.
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On November 1st, Cherokee participated in the Olympic Conference Championships at Gloucester County College and, although they were the easy favorites to win the Conference Meet, Coach Shaklee rested the top Varsity for the up-coming state races. Still, the JV turned in solid performances and took 4th place overall, and 1st place among Burlington County teams. Among the upperclassmen, Matt Dolan and Vinny Marziano ran PR's in the Varsity competition, and Brett Wintermute (the first Cherokee finisher) did the same in the JV race!
The coaches selected Brett Wintermute as the "Runner of the Meet," citing his last few races and this race in particular. Brett dropped his PR on the Gloucester County College, A course by 1:15, from 20:00 against Cherry Hill East to 18:45!
No pictures are available from this meet.
The training was finished, the teams were determined, the bets were made, and on November 5th, Cherokee's non-Varsity runners toed the line on Haddonfield's 5K course for their last meet of the season. The competition included a number of SJ schools but the real battle was for "bragging rights" within the team itself.
The coaches broke the non-Varsity runners into two teams and even distributed different uniforms: "Villanova," coached by Steve Shaklee, and "Duke," coached by Chris Callinan. The teams ran well and several runners even ran PR's, but once again Mr. Callinan was forced to recognize the superior leadership of Mr. Shaklee! Final score: Villanova, 117; Duke, 137.
The winning "Villanova" team was made up of front-runner Rich Nelson (finished 1st in the intra-squad competition); followed by Vinny Marziano (3rd); Brett Wintermute (7th); Eric Sczepanski (8th); Kevin Cuneo (9th); Jeff Mullen (10th) Zach Viggiano (13th); Joe Foley (15th); and Ian Mitchell (17th).
The "Duke" team was made up of team leader Matt Dolan (2nd); Will Andes (4th); Steve Brown (5th); Brandon Smith (6th); Mike Brown (11th); Don Bosworth (12th); Matt Raychert (14th); and Jason Becker (16th).
In the SJ competition, Cherokee runners practically swept the top places, scoring an almost perfect 16 points in the meet. Nelson was 1st overall; closely followed by Dolan (2nd); Marziano (3rd); Andes (4th) and Steve Brown (6th).
Unfortunately, due to inclement weather, no pictures are available from this meet.
The Championship Season began on Saturday, November 8th with Cherokee competing in the Group IV Sectionals at Delsea High School in Franklin, NJ. Their job was a difficult one, however, because the # 1 and # 3 teams in New Jersey, Mainland and Toms River North, were in the race, and they had to run "really well" to overcome them.
The team did a great job but didn't run well enough to beat their highly-touted opponents. Tom Yersak finished in 8th (16:00); Greg Bredeck in 9th (16:12); Nick Freeman in 15th (16:30); James Maneval in 18th (16:37) and McLaughlin in 21st (16:26). Mike Candy finished in 27th (16:57); and Paul McFadden in 34th (17:09).
The team's average time of 16:25 was the third fastest time in the Group IV race, behind Mainland and North. In addition, scored individually against all of the other teams running in Sectionals that day, Cherokee's team finished in third place.
Cherokee continued to be ranked 2nd (behind Mainland) in South Jersey by the Camden Courier-Post, and 5th (behind Mainland, CBA, Toms River North and Ridgewood) in the state by the Newark Star-Ledger!
The coaches selected Tom Yersak as the "Runner of the Meet" because of his tremendous effort against the state's top runners, his role as team leader in the meet, and the excellent PR he set in the race.
Complete meet results at Scullion
