On September 10th, 2026, the team traveled to DREAM Park for The South Jersey Open and we'll leave it to Coach Shaklee to describe the action!
"After a long break from competition, the Cherokee boys were back at it on Saturday, October 10th at Dream Park, for The South Jersey Open.
"The large school varsity race was first and, even with our top six runners sitting it out, we knew we had a competitive team that could finish in the medals (top 3). With seven teams ranked in the South Jersey top twenty poll, it was lining up to be a challenging race!
"The boys responded to the challenge with five of the seven setting new 5k PRs, while a sixth PRed on the Dream Park course! The result was a third place finish behind #6 Cherry Hill East and #9 Highland Regional! Senior, Bruce Novoa, running his first 5k of the year, led the way with a 9th place finish in 16:35.0, a 26 second PR! This bodes well for his potential to help the team at Sectionals, States and the Meet of Champions! Junior, Trayce Slumsky, was next, in 14th place with an even bigger PR of 34 seconds in 16:42.5! Sophomore, Colton Harbold, was right behind Trayce, placing 15th in 16:46.6, a 27 second PR! Freshman, Drew Burdette, dropped 53 seconds off of his high school PR (run 3 weeks ago at Holmdel) to take 24th in 17:08.2! Our final scorer, junior, Evan Amato, although not having his best race, still managed to keep his head in the fight, taking 9 seconds off of his previous best in 27th place! Our 6th and 7th racers, seniors Jack Finley and Matt Muschek, did not quite manage new 5K PRs but each was only a few seconds off their best with Jack taking 35th in 17:19.5 and Matt finishing 45th in 17:47.2, his best time at Dream Park! The result was a third place finish behind 6th ranked CH East and 9th ranked Highland Regional!
"The freshmen were up next and were looking for big improvement from their initial 4K race at the SJ Shootout a month earlier. They did not disappoint! All six runners ran much faster than they had a month ago! Their times were anywhere from one minute to almost four minutes faster! Deegan Klagholz led the way for the team with his 4th place finish! Not far behind Deegan, and also finishing in the medals, was Kharmai Black, in 10th. He was followed by Graham Suplee, 21st, Greyson Justice, 23rd, Noah Miller, 48th, and EJ Cortez, 51st. EJ showed the biggest jump, knocking 3:54 off of his previous time! Their efforts earned them a third place finish!
"Finally, the Junior Varsity squad took to the course. While most teams were running with their 8th through 14th runners, our line-up began with runner #14 on our depth chart JJ Duncan (since we held 6 out of the varsity race and moved 6 up from JV to varsity). Despite that disadvantage, the team competed fiercely to take 2nd place in a field of 17 teams! JJ certainly did not run like a 14th man! He went right to the lead and ran a very aggressive race. Although he eventually was caught by the top two CH East runners, he held one of them off to take 2nd place with a new PR of 17:27.8! To put that in perspective, JJ would have been in the top 5 on 27 of the 31 teams in the two varsity races! Also finishing in the top 10 was junior, Fletcher D'Alessandro, who knocked over a minute off of his previous 5k PR! Jonathan Merkel, 12, Gavin Quinn, 10 and Brayden Pedersen, 12, completed the scoring for the team. Jonathan and Gavin PRed by 50 seconds and 42 seconds respectively, while Brayden ran his season's best time! Our final three runners, sophomore, Ryan Niederberger, along with juniors, Evan Schad and Nick Carpineto, all set new 5K PRs, by 53 seconds, 1:56 and 1:20! It was a great way to end a very successful meet for the team!
"Next up, the entire team will travel to Crystal Lake Park on Friday for the Burlington County Championship Meet. The varsity seven will be in action for the first time since the Holmdel Opener and we will be looking to extend our county championship streak to thirteen. To do so, we will have to contend with Cinnaminson, currently ranked 4th in South Jersey and 14th in the state. It should be a good meet!"
Details at: NJ. MileSplit
Dennis edited his own pictures, and "collected" Kristin Gauthier's excellect pictures as well. Those pictures are available on our Google site!. Make sure you thank Dennis for his work. You might mention a specific picture you and your Grandmother likes! You may also thank Kristin too but she gets paid and Dennis doesn't! :< )
Here are a few to excite the ladies!
On September 16th, 2026, the team returned to the most-difficult parking park of the season, Crystal Lake, for the Burlington COunty Open and Coach Shaklee had this to say about the meet,
"On Friday, October 16th, the Cherokee Boys Cross Country Team traveled to Crystal Lake Park in Mansfield Township for the Burlington County Open. On a warm and humid day, the team was looking to win a thirteenth consecutive county title and to, once again, dominate the JV race. Both goals were achieved!
"The varsity race went off first. Unlike last year, when the course was dry and the conditions were ideal (sunny, 64, 9 mph wind), this year the course was muddy and the conditions were unusually warm for mid October (sunny, 79, humid, 6 mph wind). While that may have affected the times, it did not keep the Cherokee athletes from showing, once again, that they are the dominant team in Burlington County! Ben Realley led the way, waiting until the last mile to move to the lead and running away from the field to win his first county title! Ben is the fourteenth Cherokee athlete to win the county championship! For the calm, controlled way he handled the field, the coaches selected Ben as the Athlete of the Meet!
"Not far behind Ben, Sean Sooy was also having a good race and held off the rest of the field to take the runner-up spot for the second year in a row! Three other Cherokee runners finished in the top ten - Gavin Danielewicz - 5th, Max Harada - 7th, and Leo Vyvyan - 9th. That gave the team a low score of 24 points. Cherokee was so dominant that, had the rest of Burlington County formed one team, Cherokee would have defeated them 24-31! For good measure, our sixth and seventh men, Bruce Novoa and Hamza Salahuddin, finished in 14th and 15th respectively in the field of 95! They both finished in front of the second man from every other team in the race with the exception of second place, Cinnaminson who put three runners in front of them. Overall, a commanding performance by the varsity seven!
"Not to be outdone, the Cherokee runners in the JV race put on an even more impressive display, sweeping the first seven places to record a perfect shut-out of the rest of the county! Matt Muschek was the individual champion, running a very savvy race through the first two and a half miles before going to the lead and pulling away for a seven-second victory! He was followed closely by Colton Harbold, Evan Amato, Trayce Slumsky, Drew Burdette, Jack Finley and JJ Duncan, in places two through seven! These seven were so good that, had they been in the varsity championship race, they would have finished in third place behind only our varsity squad and Cinnaminson, the 4th ranked team in South Jersey! Other top twenty-five finishes (in the field of 139) were turned in by Fletcher D'Alessandro - 14th, Gavin Quinn - 16th, Jonathan Merkel - 18th, Deegan Klagholz - 21st and Ryan Niederberger - 25th!
"Next up is the Olympic Conference Championship on Wednesday, October 21st at Dream Park, where the team will be looking for a sixth consecutive championship and a tenth in the last eleven years!"
Details available at: NJ.MileSplit.
Dennis is firing along like Ben and Matt and will have the pictures soon! But a passing thought, not related to Ben or Matt, is for you put your uniform strings into your pants! A Urologist explained that there is no danger of strangulating anything if you follow that procedure! ; > )
