The girls’ cross country team did it again. This past weekend they participated in the Slippery Rock University Mack Cooper Invitational where they won a back-to-back gold medal out of a field of 56 schools.
The Lady Foxes finished with 62 points, far overwhelming second-place North Allegheny High School’s 163 points. Longtime section rival Oakland Catholic finished with 196 points.
Fox Chapel Area High School’s girls’ team was led by senior Calean Miller, who placed third out of 470 girls, while Brooke Krally, a sophomore, was seventh. Juniors Sarena Seeger finished 16th, fellow junior Annika Urban placed 17th, and sophomore Grace Sisson was 30th.
While it was a hot day, the Coach Tom Moul says the Lady Foxes are tough as nails, well prepared to race in all kinds of conditions, and they actually like to run the difficult course, which also serves as the site of the WPIAL championship.
“It’s a hard start to the course and the kids know they have to get a head start by putting themselves upfront and in a good position to get out fast,” says Coach Moul. “The uphill start isn’t even the hardest part of the course; it’s coming up a different hill around the end of mile two. They’ll tell you that’s the most difficult part because they still have a mile to go. But all of them have pretty good kicks to finish the race.”
Caelan and Brooke both clocked personal best times at Mack Cooper. This year Caelen finished in 19:10, nearly a minute better than her time last year. Brooke’s time was 19:47 this year while she finished at 20:44 at the 2016 event.
Other varsity members of the girls’ varsity team who also trained hard to participate in the invitational were senior Megan Safford, juniors Anna Folkerts and Ziya Xu, sophomore Izzy Doerr, and freshman Allison Carey.
The boys also participated in the invitational and had two runners on the medal stand.
“The team finished eighth, which is pretty good when you consider there were also more than 50 teams in the boys’ category,” says Coach Moul.
Senior Jonathan Folkerts and sophomore Christian Fitch each had personal bests on the course. Christian placed 10th with a time of 16:40 and Jonathan finished 23rd at 17:12.
Also running at the Mack Cooper Invitational were juniors Ian Brown, Avery Bursick, Jonah Green, and Greg Overbeck; sophomore Oscar Oliva; and freshmen Shane Funk, Ryan Kenyon, and Jose Morales.
Next up for both squads is the WPIAL championship meet on October 26. Both teams are going into the meet as WPIAL AAA section 4 champs.
“The girls are favored to win, but we all try not to get too confident,” adds. Coach Moul. “I remind all of them that they need to stay focused and continue to train and concentrate on the little things like nutrition and getting enough sleep.”
His words of wisdom seem to be working and, hopefully, will continue to ring true as the post season begins.