NYA’s boys cross-country team travelled to Manchester, NH on Saturday to compete in the Manchester Invitational. On a warm fall day, over the challenging 3.1-mile course, the boys took on some of the best runners from across New England. Rising to the challenge, nearly all the guys set new personal records as the team continued its season of remarkable improvement. In the Small School race, NYA finished 27th of 35 teams.
Running in the separate freshman race, Josh Chapman started off the day for the boys with a strong 13:44 for the 2-mile course. His pace of 6:52/mile was even faster than his impressive debut last week. Josh will get a chance to compete in an all-freshman race again this coming weekend in Belfast – this time at the full 5k distance.
In the boys JV race, three NYA runners were among the massive 347-man field. Johnny Xu Li ’15 was the team’s top runner in this race in 284th place. His time of 23:18 was a personal record and was only three second slower than he ran the much shorter course in Yarmouth last week.
Next came Alex Cai ’13, whose 24:13 was a new personal record with an improvement of 1:45 over the race two weeks ago. Great job, Alex!
Ian Bennett ’15 also ran in the JV race. His time of 26:32 shattered his previous personal record by nearly 50 seconds.
In the varsity small school race, Matt Malcom ’15 led the team with a new personal record of 17:48 (45th place in a field of 252). This is the first time that Matt has broken 18:00 for the 5k distance and it shows he’s on track for an excellent rest of the season.
NYA’s number two runner, Jake Burns ’13 also had a banner day. His time of 19:04 (118th place) was a 43-second personal record and an improvement of almost a minute over his time at Manchester last year.
Third for the team on the day was Haley Cunningham ’15. Haley’s 20:12 (172nd) was his fourth personal record in as many weeks and more than a minute faster than he ran this distance two weeks ago.
Jin Yao ’14 finished as the team’s number four. Jin also set a personal record by nearly a minute (20:59 / 201st), his fourth personal record in a month.
John Leblanc ’15 rounded out NYA’s varsity scorers. He ran a gritty 21:07 (208th) on a day when he didn’t feel his best.
Aldis Gamble ’13 stepped up with a great performance as the team’s sixth man. Aldis ran his race plan to perfection and set a PR (23:01 / 238th) on the challenging hill course.
Andy Liu ’14 was the team’s seventh man. He also ran a tough race (24:30 / 246th) on a day when he didn’t feel his best.
Full results can be found here. And here are more photos.
Overall, the team performances were very impressive. This is a young team with a lot of capacity for improvement and they will be fun to follow over the next month. The next meet will be another large invitational with scores of schools and hundreds of runners. The Meet of Champions at Belfast will be next Saturday (9/29) at the site of the State Championship meet. Come on out and cheer us on!