The Kids are Alright

"In a meet that brought out the best from both teams, the Wellesley boys ended Newton North's four-year reign over the Bay State Conference by the slimmest of margins..."

When I write stories for the NNHS-XC website, I often struggle to find the right words to capture the spirit of the moment. But last night, having lingered a while at the edge of the Walpole town forest, the words quoted above flashed into my mind on their own. In this case, the spirit of the moment was quite willing to express itself without my intervention.

It was a terrific cross-country meet, one of the most anticipated and exciting meets I have ever experienced as a competitor or as coach. Both teams ran valiantly. Both teams deserved to win. The competition elevated both teams, and elevated the mutual respect between them.

With Wellesley holding an early advantage, Newton fought back as Noah Jampol, Seb Putzeys, and Ben Chebot ran their best races of the season so far, moving up against an extremeley deep and capable Wellesley pack. In the final four hundred meters of the race, the relative score of the teams changed not once, but several times, as Wellesley's Erich Reinhard and Tom Mayell overtook a courageous run by North's Noah Jampol, and then Seb caught and passed Wellesley's 4th and 5th runners, and Ben caught Wellesley's 7th runner. Seb's final 50 meters in which he gave everything he had to hold off Wellesley's Nick Carroll was outstanding and shows how far Seb has come in developing as a runner.

The times were very fast. When Newton last ran this course in 2002, then sophomore Chris Barnicle ran 14:37, and Pat Pierce ran 15:04. Those two would go 1-2 in the Bay State Conference meet that year, and Barnicle would go on to win the EMass Div I meet in 15:53 at Franklin Park. Yesterday, Polgar and Meade ran 14:20 and 14:25. Brecher ran 14:50. Reinhard and Mayell ran 15:00 and 15:05.

The only cloud in the sky occured after the meet when Mike Mahon, Natick's self-styled cross-country guru, announced in a loud voice that Newton North had won the meet 27-28. Not only was he wrong about the score, he was wrong to say anything about the score before official results were in. Credit goes to the Walpole coach, Tim Giblin, for maintaining his cool and making sure all the coaches had the results in hand and understood the tiebreaking procedure before announcing the actual result.

Oh, and the tiebreaker... It's very simple. If after the team's top five scorers have been counted the result is a tie, then the team with the faster sixth man wins. Wellesley had the faster sixth man and they won. Any protests to the contrary, Wellesley was the better team on Wednesday -- if only by the slimmest of margins.

It reminded me of that famous football headline from the 1968 Harvard-Yale game,

"Harvard Wins 29-29!"

I thought about using the headline "Wellesley Wins 28-28" but figured no one would appreciate the reference.

I'm sorry not to give equal press to the girls meet. Unlike three years ago, when the girls meet was THE outstanding dual meet of the year, yesterday's meet was over soon after it began. The race between Wellesley's Brielle Chabot and Jess Barton turned out not to be the difference. The difference was the depth of Wellesley's pack, which simply overwhlemed the Tigers, despit fine performances from Haleigh Smith (5th) and Carolyn Ranti (6th).

As Coach Peter Martin said, "This [Wellesley] team reminds me of my teams." Deep, talented, and confident.