Milton High Girls Cross Country Looks to Stay Unbeaten

The standard of excellence has been set for the Milton High School girls cross country team. The Wildcats haven't had a loss in a dual meet in two years.

That's 23-0 in case you are counting, and head coach Dale Snyder doesn't want to give up that perfect record in 2010.

"Their goal a long time ago was to stay undefeated," said the long-time coach. "That's their goal. There are some good teams out there. That's the goal I have."

In order to keep the winning going, Snyder will rely on a quartet of senior runners to pace the rest of the squad. Mairead Kiernan and Clara Heiden return as senior captains, and Angelica Pizze and Julia O'Brien will round out the senior leadership.

The Wildcats have only lost two main runners from the 2009 squad, and Snyder believes this edition could fair just as well in the Bay State Conference.

"We lost two kids from the team from last year, so I think we are going to be in pretty good shape this year," said Snyder. "I know that we are going to be very good in the Bay State Conference."

The girl's won the Bay State Conference Herget Division last season and won the overall Bay State Conference title in the process.

Snyder will mainly be relying on his four runners to run together and be efficient as a group, because in cross-country, the more consistent a team's runners are together, then the more points it can gain in a meet.

"We have four, five or six kids that can run together," said Snyder. "Once you run together then you got a team that can win meets."

Snyder will also be looking for a couple of younger runners to step up during tryouts, but will be looking for the jump of his top runners from year three to year four to keep the team undefeated.

He said, "It depends on how much the kids from last year matured to this year."

Photos from the 2009 cross country season by Roy Chambers can be found here.