First meet of the season today

For NNHS cross-country, the 2005 season begins today with a tri-meet against Framingham and Needham at Cold Springs Park. The weather forecast is for temperatures in the mid-high 80s, with above average humidity.

In the girls varsity race, Needham might provide some competition for the Tigers. Needham won their first meet v. Brookline 21-38, and rumor has it that they have several good runners who joined the team as sophomores (perhaps they played soccer freshman year?). Nevertheless, North is probably too strong up front and too deep to be seriously challenged. The Tigers have defending Div I State Champion Jess Barton and BSC all-star Haleigh Smith leading the way, with varsity returnees Szeman Lam and Jessie Cochran. Most intriguing is Newton's freshman class, which is rumored to be very, very good. Framingham had a large, young team last year, and finished 4th in the league meet, exceeding all expectations. It could be a good battle between Framingham and Needham, but it would be very surprising, indeed, if either one could scare North.

The boys varsity race is likely to be much closer. On Friday, Needham suffered a narrow loss to Brookline (25-32), taking places 3rd-5th. Leading the Rockets is Charles Beard, who ran 17:19 to finish 3rd in the Brookline meet. Newton figures to take the top two places with Dave Polgar and Doug Brecher by far the strongest runners in the race. After that, the intrigue begins. Coach Jim Blackburn feels that Noah Jampol is capable of taking 3rd, which would clinch the meet for the Tigers, but if Beard takes 3rd, it will fall to North's untested underclassmen to step it up and fill in the gaps in the top five. Best bets for placing the top five for Newton are sophomores Seb Putzys and Ben Chebot, and juniors Peter Sun and Alex Polizzotti. Unless something dramatic happened over the summer, Framingham doesn't figure to be a factor in the race.

There has been a poll on the NNHS-XC yahoo group about how many Togers will break 19 minutes in the first race. It's an intersting question. Here's how many runners have accomplished that feat in the first home meet in each of the last four years:

2001 - 7
2002 - 5
2003 - 8
2004 - 13 (meet held Oct 13)

The first home meet was very late in 2004, due to postponements. As a result, an unprecedented 13 runners were under 19 minutes. More typical was 2002, when the first home meet was held on a very hot day. On that day Barnicle, Pierce, O'Donovan, Kaufman, and Polgar managed to go under 19.

My prediction for tomorrow is that Polgar, Brecher, Jampol, and Putzys will definitely go under 19:00. After that, the best bets are Chebot and Polizzotti.

Anyone coming to the meet, remember that Farmer's Market will create traffic and parking problems.