Coach Shaklee sent his report quickly! We always appreciate his weather report though he missed the light frost that greeted those who arrived an hour and a half before the gun sounded for the first race! "It was a cold and windy morning that greeted our photographer when he arrived!" But we delay!
"It was a cool, windy day on Saturday, November 1st, when the team traveled to DREAM Park for the Sectional Championship meet. The conditions were much like they had been for our conference meet a week and a half earlier, but with a slightly stronger wind.
"We were going in missing senior captain, Logan Bromley, who is out for the rest of the season with a foot injury. Logan ran 15:52 at DREAM Park last year so it was a big loss. Still, with the seven guys we were running, we knew that, with decent races, we would come out on top! The coaches spoke to the guys about not pushing the pace early and, instead, tucking in and just going with the pack That strategy may have unwittingly led to a problem for junior, Gavin Danielewicz. Since most of the top runners were keying off of the individual favorite, our top man, Jack Tindall, no one took the pace out and everyone was running on top of each other. Gavin's heel got clipped early and his shoe came partially off. He tried to keep it on for a while but eventually realized he needed to kick it off and do his best with one bare foot. As a result, he did not finish where he certainly would have if that did not happen. Senior co-captain, Dom Pileri, was having an off race as well so, all of a sudden, things seemed a little less certain. We needed others to step up!
"Jack certainly did so! He executed the race strategy perfectly, staying tucked in through two and a quarter miles before moving to the lead and dusting the field with a last mile of 4:43! Although just a sophomore, Jack is now a two-time Sectional Champion!
"Behind Jack, Ben Realley, was in a battle with the top two Cherry Hill East runners over the final mile. Ben managed to beat one but came up just a bit short of the other, finishing in third to give us a low four points after two runners. Our third man, Sean Sooy, had another good race, closing well over the second half to finish in sixth, beating East's third man by two places! Max Harada, our fourth man, could not match his great race from the conference meet but held it together enough to finish in fourteenth, six places ahead of East's fourth man! It then came down to our 'seventh man,' Leo Vyvyan, to wrap things up for us. Leo has been running consistently strong races all year and he continued that trend, moving from seventh man to fifth man and finishing in eighteenth to complete the scoring for the team. For good measure, Gavin 'one-shoe' Danielewicz, finished one place behind Leo, giving us six runners in before East's fourth, for a 42 to 59 victory! For his strong run, Leo was selected as Athlete of the Meet1 The coaches appreciated the way he kept his composure and stayed focused and determined all the way! And, although it was not his best, Dom Pileri still was the first seventh man to cross the line, two places in front of the seventh man from Cherry Hill East!
"It was not the prettiest of wins but it was a win, and it gave us a seventh consecutive victory and it was Number Fifteen overall for the program!
"Next up, the team will return to Holmdel to race in the State Group 4 Championship Meet on Saturday, November 8th. We will need good races from everyone to contend for the championship!"
Details at: NJ.MileSplit.
Last week, our photographer was given the task of making Ben Realley beautiful . . . well, maybe he said "handsome" or simply "better looking" . . . in his pictures! Stunned by this request from a guy who is already beyond "handsome," and who already has many glorious pictures of himself in our collection, our photographer wondered what he could do by using PhotoShop and other technology to improve Ben's looks?
After hours of applying PhotoShop and AI technology to original pictures of Ben, as well as personal descriptions of Ben by his many admirers, we came up with the following that we hope makes him "better looking." The beard was applied after many requests. Whadda ya think?
That problem solved, let's get to the Sectional pictures! Here are a few and these and the rest will be available on our Google site soon!