Hare, Princeton on pace to defend MoC title
Keeping its tradition alive as one of the state’s top cross country counties, the Mercer boys are guaranteed three teams in next week’s NJSIAA Meet of Champions and possibly two more teams and an individual when wild card invitations are announced on Sunday.
Highlighting the individual efforts was a first-place finish by Princeton senior Will Hare, who won the Group IV race in 16:01.
Defending MoC champion Princeton finished second in Saturday’s Group IV race at Holmdel Park, while Hopewell Valley also took second in the Group III race. Robbinsville finished third in Group II. The top three teams in each group advance, and wild card entries are based on the next best times.
West Windsor-Plainsboro South should likely get a wild card out of Group IV, and WW-P North also has a shot out of Group III. Nottingham’s Jon Torres, who finished 12th in Group III, is in good shape for an individual wild card.
Princeton failed to defend its Group IV title but that’s not surprising since it lost top runner Alex Roth (now at Penn) to graduation last year. The Little Tigers amassed 91 points, finishing second to South Jersey titan Kingsway, which had 52.
Hare, who finished sixth in 2016, dropped eight seconds off last year’s time to claim first place. Acasio Pinheiro (16:17) was sixth for Princeton, while Jackson McCarthy (27th, 16:42), Alex Ackerman (33rd, 16:46) and Jackson Donahue (40th, 16:48) rounded out the Tigers Top 5.
Hopewell was coming off a North Jersey 2 Group III sectional meet in which it advanced despite not running up to its potential at Greystone Park in Morris County. Head coach John Zalot’s team finished 12 points behind Mendham with 90 at Holmdel.
“Last week was a combination of us never having run at Greystone before, and no one having their A race,” said Bulldogs assistant Aaron Oldfield. “No one ran poorly, but they had their A-minus or B-plus race. Today they ran much, much better. Man for man they all ran really well, Mendham just ran a great race.”
Teddy Meredith finished fourth for the Bulldogs in 16:11, followed by Sean Dolan (10th, 16:30), Will Titus (17th, 16:39), Michael Pavicic (33rd, 16:55) and Tim Dolan (37th, 17:02).
If WWPN was not to get a wildcard, Matthew Santamaria would advance as an individual after finishing eighth in Group III in 16:24.
Robbinsville scored 116 points to finish behind Haddonfield (53) and Voorhees (69). Dan White was the Ravens top man in 12th place at 16:55, followed by Tyler Bork (21st, 17:07), Jared Taylor (29th, 17:18), Nick Anderson (36th, 17:25) and Roman Rychkov (45th, 17:38).
In looking toward the Meet of Champions, also at Holmdel, Oldfield feels that Mercer could finish with two of the state’s top five teams if everyone runs their race.
“I think when the rankings come out based on averages, Princeton will be third and we’ll be in the top five,” he said. “That says a lot about the county when you have two of the top five teams in the entire state. If you look at it next week, Kingsway, CBA and Princeton could all win it, and we look like a five. But who knows’ what’s gonna happen. That’s a crazy course.”
Mercer did not advance any teams in the girls races, but did have two individual standouts. Notre Dame’s Bridget Carrezola advanced with a fourth-place time of 19:49 in Non-Public A and Allentown’s Devon Hoernlein finished 11th in Group III and could get a wild card.