On September 6th, 2025, the team hosted the 29th Annual Cherokee Challenge. (Technically, it began in 1996 and would have been the 25th Annual but it was canceled in 2020 as a result of the COVID Pandemic.) As a business effort, it was, as usual, very successful and will provide some of the money required for the Virginia trip this year, etc.
Coach Shaklee sent his own summary of the exercise:
"On a warm and muggy day that made racing more difficult, the 29th Cherokee Challenge saw a limited Cherokee boys squad take to the course. The coaches held out six of the team's top runners and several others. As a result, we had just fourteen athletes in the meet.
"All five of our Freshmen - Hamza Salahuddin, Colton Harbold, JJ Duncan, Ryan Niederberger and Dawson Talbot - competed with their competition going off at 10:00 AM. Hamza moved up with the leaders from the start and, by the 800 meter mark, was running side-by-side with another athlete at the front. Coming out of the woods and up the Cherokee Challenge Hill, Hamza opened up a lead. However, another runner came up to challenge him and even took the lead heading into the final portion of the course. To his credit, Hamza kept the leader in range and then used a strong kick to move to the lead just before the finish line to take the victory in his first race for Cherokee! The coaches selected Hamza as Athlete of the Meet for the poise he showed in handling the challenge he faced, late in the race, to get the win! Colton also had a strong finish, moving up from 23rd, with 800 to go, to take eighteenth! JJ ran very well to finish in 57th in the field of 282 runners, while Ryan and Dawson finished in 129th and 156th respectively!
"Evan Amato led the team in the Sophomore Race, moving up two places from his 20th place finish in the freshman race last year to take 18th in a field of 320 runners! His 11:02 was a 43 second improvement over last year!
"Gavin Danielewicz, Leo Vyvyan and Jack Finley led our Junior contingent, finishing 25th, 29th and 39th respectively in the field of 296! While Leo did not run last year, Gavin improved his time by 14 seconds and Jack by 19 seconds!
"Our lone Senior was Carlo Brown, who finished 71st out of 246 in his first ever Cherokee Challenge!
"Next up, the team will travel to Mechanicsville, VA and to defend the championship won last year at the RVA Relays!"
Details from the meet are available at: NJ.MileSplit.
Our photographer -- who is said to have had the fastest trigger finger of the VietNam War -- took several thousand pictures for Cherokee and MileSplit and, after editing for days, is totally remorseful! Still, here are a few of his pictures and these and the rest are posted on our Google link.
Our photographer wants to express his appreciation to Leo Vyvyan for his help on Saturday. After the meet, Leo saw him struggling across a soccer field with all his gear and quickly offered help: "You OK? . . . No . . . You need help? . . . Yes." To show his appreciation, our photographer posted only one shared picture of Leo drolling as he reached the top of Cherokee Hill instead of the cropped picture that focuses entirely on Leo in all his glory. That picture is available on the Google link. Thanks Leo! You're the best!
He's alive! He's alive! Our photographer spent days editing his 2000+ pictures from the Challenge but he somehow overlooked pictures of the only Senior who raced that day! Carlo Brown was hidden by taller opponents during the race but he was there! For the record, he beat that giant who ran ahead of him (#2670) in the first picture by 19 places! GO CARLO!
On September 13th, 2025, the boys and girls teams traveled to Mechanicsville, VA this weekend for the 10th running of the RVA Relays. It was our third trip to the meet (last year and 2019) and it was a successful meet for both squads!
The boys won the B & C races while finishing second in the championship race. The girls were 6th in the B race and 9th in the C race, while winning the Championship Division!
Here is a recap of the boys races from Coach Shaklee:
"At 4:30, when the B/C race went off, it was sunny, 85 and humid. Not exactly ideal conditions. However, that did not stop the boys from taking care of business!
"There were 94 teams in the race and not only did the Cherokee B team win the race by a full minute, but the Cherokee C team finished 6th overall, behind our B team and the B teams from only four other schools! They beat the second place C team by one minute and eighteen seconds!
"The B squad consisted of freshman, Hamza Salahuddin, sophomore, Evan Amato, and juniors, Leo Vyvyan, Gavin Danielewicz and Max Harada. All five athletes ran strong legs to play an equal part in the victory!
"The C team was comprised of senior, Carlo Brown, junior, Jack Finley, sophomores, Dylan Weiner and Trayce Slumsky, and freshman, Colton Harbold. While all five contributed to the win, it was Jack who showed the most improvement from last year to this, dropping 49 seconds despite the difficult conditions and the (unexplainable) fact that the course was running about 15 to 20 seconds slower this year!
"Before the Championship race, four Cherokee athletes, junior, Jonathan Merkel, sophomore, Fletcher D'Alessandro, and freshmen, Ryan Neiderberger and JJ Duncan, competed in the extra race which had a field of 264 runners. All four acquitted themselves well with JJ leading the way in fourth! He sprinted to the front of the pack early in the race and, despite being over-extended, held off challenges from several runners in the later stages of the race to claim that fourth spot! For his efforts, the coaches named JJ the Co-Athlete of the Meet!
"When the championship race went off at 7:50, the sun was down and the temperature was a more moderate 71 degrees. However, the air was still quite humid. Senior, Logan Bromley, got the team off to a good start, handing off in a tie for second, just behind the lead team. Senior, Dom Pileri, who missed this race and a lot of the season last year due to injury, made his first run on the RVA course a good one, battling all the way to hand off in a virtual tie with two other teams, one being St John's Prep of DC, who has some real talent in their roster. For the way Dom battled from start to finish and really kept his focus positive, the coaches also named him Co-Athlete of the Meet! St John's third leg was one of their best athletes (a 1:54, 4:12, 9:;19 kid) and he took off right from the start, building a lead over junior, Sean Sooy, who was out in front of the rest of the field. St John's had a 31 second lead after the third leg which left junior, Ben Realley, all by himself for the entire fourth leg. Although he made up a bit of ground, we were still down by 18 seconds when sophomore, Jack Tindall, got the baton for the anchor leg. The St John's anchor was a senior with track times of 4:11.27 for 1600 and 1:49.38 for the 800! Jack gave it his best effort and managed to close the gap a little, but the 18 second deficit was too much to cover and we finished in second place, 11 seconds behind the winner.
"The Overall Champions Award is given to the team with the best combined finishes from all three divisions and Cherokee, with two wins and a runner-up finish, claimed that prize!
"Much of the team will race next on Friday at the Osprey Invitational at Stockton University. The varsity seven, however, will take that meet off and, instead, spend the next three weeks training before racing the Shore Coaches Invitational on October 4th!"
Details at the Virginia MileSplit: VA.MileSplit
Our photographer was in West Virginia to shoot his son's 45-mile Mountain Bike race (Group 2nd!) but there should be tons of pictures available after the meet! One, the MileSplit photographer in Virginia, took over 5,000 unedited pictures before she realized it was too dark for most of them to be useful. However, a friendly but unidentified source provided a convenient Google document of, specifically, Cherokee athletes, and we much appreciate the effort! It is HERE.
The following were the only pictures of Cherokee athletes that could be found on the Virginia MileSplit site before the sun set. Yep, one kid got almost all the love! The photographer must have been his mother!
These were passed along by Coach Shaklee:
Coach Shaklee sent the following comment on the meet:
"The Cherokee boys cross country team competed in the Osprey Invitational at Stockton University on Friday, September 19th and came away with some impressive results!
"The coaches held out the team's top seven runners, preferring to have them train for the upcoming championship season. With those athletes out, it was an opportunity for others to show that they are a pretty good varsity team as well.
"And that they did!
"The Varsity race went off first with 35 teams and 276 runners. Junior, Gavin Danielewicz led the team with an 8th place finish and a 32 second 5k PR of 16:33! Close behind Gavin was fellow junior, Leo Vyvyan, in 13th place with a 28 second PR of his own - 16:45! Jack Finley, Bruce Novoa and Evan Amato finished 34th, 39th and 62nd respectively, all three running new 5k PR's! Evan improved his best by 6 seconds, Bruce by 23 seconds, and Jack by 67 seconds! With a score of 151, the boys finished in 4th place, a nice result for their first time in varsity competition!
"The JV squad of Trayce Slumsky, 10, Colton Harbold, 9, Matt Muschek, 11, Jonathan Merkel, 11, Fletcher D'Alessandro, 10, Dawson Talbot, 9 and Nick Carpineto, 10, matched the varsity squad with a 4th place finish in the field of 23 teams. The highlight for Cherokee was Trayce's Individual win in 17:57, a 76 second PR! Not far behind Trayce was his freshman teammate, Colton, in 3rd, with a very strong showing in his first high school 5k race! The other five runners also set new PR's! Matt improved by 34 seconds, Jonathan by 26 seconds, Fletcher and Nick by 77 seconds each, and Dawson Talbot by 2:21!
"With so many outstanding performances, Choosing an Athlete of the Meet was not easy. Just as at the RVA Relays, the coaches decided on Co-Athlete of the Meet award winners, Gavin Danielewicz and Trayce Slumsky. Gavin, for the way he kept his focus through the middle of the race and then closed so well to move into 8th place, showing he is a very good varsity athlete! Trayce, for the way he handled leading from start to finish and still managed to PR by a huge margin!
"So, after a successful competition, the team will now train for two weeks in preparation for the Shore Coaches Invitational on Saturday, October 4th!"
Our photographer was there and shot over 1500 pics for us and MileSplit. After editing, he posted some of his pictures here and sent those and the others to our Google site.
Details available at: NJ.MileSplit.
Auspicious T-shirt at the meet considering Shore Coaches looms: "Hills Pay the Bills"!
Thinking back, maybe 65 years, when we were in a meet somewhere away from home and we saw a young, unidentified athlete take off like the proverbial "Bat out of Hell," we didn't worry much. "Let him go, he'll come back to us.". . . meaning, he's stupid for going out that fast and he'll slow down soon. But, at the mile mark, when he is still out there, coaches begin to scream and we begin to worry! "Oh crap, who is this kid?" So, we begin to pick up the pace but the kid stays out front. Crap! We judged wrong and an unknown kid named Trayce Slumsky beat us badly. OK, there were no guys named Trayce Slumsky 65 years ago, but there were guys LIKE Trayce -- willing to take a shot at it and go like no others that day in that race -- and we paid the price! Crap!
Hey slug, think about Gavin too! Did you see him whip that kid in the last 100 of that race? Bet you paid the price for that kind of kid too!
For "flatlanders" like all of us in South Jersey, the name "Holmdel" sends chills up our backs! It takes a strong self-image, honed by tough training and actual race experience on the course, to lessen those fears! Shore Coaches is meant to be one of those early race experiences, preparation for the State Championships in November.
That said, Coach Shaklee has always treated it as a beginning, not the end. "Look good at Shore Coaches, look great at States!" He began bringing along his runners years ago on the relatively new Holmdel course and is still doing so today.
Back in the early 80's, when the Holmdel course was no where near as well manicured as it is today, and the training was, for most, not even close to what it is today, Bruce Miller of Cherry Hill East (coached by our photographer and Coach Shaklee) set the Shore Coaches meet record at Holmdel, a blazing 16:01! Not exactly unheard of then because several guys ran under 16:00 at prior State meets in November but VERY fast for early October!
Last year, as Coach Shaklee reported, "Jack Tindall, lit up the Holmdel course! His time of 15:55 knocked twenty seconds off the old freshman record set by Craig Forys in 2003! It was also 44 seconds faster than the previous Cherokee freshman record of 16:39 set last year by Ben Realley (who recorded a one-second PR of 16:38 for ninth)."
"Look good at Shore Coaches . . .."
How To Run a Race and Be a Champion!
I don't know exactly how to run a race but I know what I did. I tried to be positive! Yes, there were those "Holy Crap" moments (like the start when everybody goes nuts) when staying positive was a major challenge but, once the race got going, I broke the race down in parts and I tried not to focus on the tough parts! Mostly, if I wasn't winning (Ha!), I aimed at the guy in front of me, then the guy in front of him. Bang, bang, bang, one after the other, aggressively! Wow, that felt really good!
I also paid attention to markers on the course. That's another "feel good" or "get organized" opportunity! The half-mile? Yikes, too fast! The mile? Within 5 seconds on my goal but slow?! OK, pass this guy . . ..
I did not think of how far I was behind the front-runners or how many runners were ahead of me: I just tried to close the distance between myself and the guys right in front of me! "Race!," I told myself! "Stay focused!" . . . and pass individuals every chance I got, one at a time! Wow, that feels great! Be Positive!
But, as excited as I became while passing guys, did I say it didn't hurt? Oh Lordy, as fit as I was, it hurt . . . badly! Sometimes, between the positive thoughts and all this passing, I wanted a truck to hit me, maybe a tree to fall on me! It hurt big time but I knew it was coming and I tried not to show it! Later, in the Army, in ferocious Army training exercises, I showed the Cadre as little as I could . . . while I secretly hoped one of them would shoot me! Overcome! I told myself! Go! . . . Go!
Here's an interesting perspective that wasn't available to me. Don't run with the same people! Look at videos or pictures of a race at different locations. Are you still running along with that "big kid in the red uniform?" . . . or "the kid with the long hair?" You're daydreaming! Don't run along with a group, zoning out and floating until a coach yells at you or you get near the finish and finally try to beat them! Focus . . . Race and pass that kid ahead of you! "Feel the Wow"!
Focus! . . . Race! . . . Be a Champion!