Basking Ridge's Saint James School Undefeated In Cross County

Press release from Saint James School:

Oct. 18, 2021

Saint James conquers Flood’s Hill to capture the OLS Invitational. Remains undefeated heading into the midpoint of the season.

Early in the week, Coach Wizeman was getting some hard news. He was learning that many of the team’s top performers would be unable to attend this weekend’s big invitational, which was being represented by 13 teams—the largest number of teams in over 4 years at any league meet. Coach was pretty candid in his initial assessment, “I am not going to lie—I was a little concerned that without both of our captains and a whole lot of other talented runners, that we would have some challenges accumulating enough points against such a talented field of teams.” SJS was actually missing 13 athletes who medaled just the week before. It is almost a statistical impossibility to overcome that sort of depletion, but as it turns out, coach’s mantra of “Next Runner Up” (meaning that they count on the entire team, even when they are down some key runners) was never more important than it was on this beautiful Saturday in South Orange. “I always run the numbers in my head and I couldn’t see how we could overcome losing that many medalists, so I was just excited by the prospect of seeing our remaining athletes perform at a high level”. And did they ever…

The meet began with the Spartans only having three boys in the 3rd grade boy’s race. This was the single most depleted unit for SJS, as they had 7 runners and 5 medalists just last week, but the Christian and Spiros Andricopolous along with Tommy Malloy all scored (top ten in each race score in this meet) to lead the way for at least a plausible path to victory. Fortunately, the third grade girls were missing only one medalist from last week, and Avery Pfinster continued her amazing inaugural season by posting her second consecutive victory, taking home gold. Bella Milelli followed closely behind, taking home her second straight top 5 finish, taking 4th overall.

The SJS 4th grade boys had only three runners, but they all made it to the medal stand and Kaden Pye got back to the winners circle taking first. Nolan Lawlor took home the silver and Alex Annese had his first top ten finish of the year, running a personal best.On the girl’s side of the 4th grade ledger, SJS had only two athletes, but both had stellar outings with Claire Johnson taking 2nd and newcomer Avery Lawlor also earning a top ten finish. However, in one of the biggest surprises of the day, 3rd grader Olivia Kielczewski, who was late due to another commitment, also joined the medal stand by stunning many of the 4th grade girls by taking 4th overall.

Things got really interesting in the boys 5-6 race, where the Collins brothers faced off against each other for the first time—and it was a spectacular 1-2 finish for the Collins tandem with Eddie taking first and Dylan taking second, both sustaining a really fast pace throughout. They were joined on the medal stand by Trace Sikorski and Adam Kielczewski. The girl’s 5-6 squad was also missing several medalists from last week, but the unit still came up big with Julia Garcia and Paige Travers both scoring critical points for the team. The boy’s 7-8 crew was short two medalists from the prior meet but Caylor Mendez picked up some of that slack by posting his first top 5 finish of the season.

But perhaps the story of the day was what could end up being the best finish of the season, when Caroline Naulty picked up at least 50 meters in the last 150 meters of the race with a blazing finishing speed to capture silver. She was followed by Ella Lawlor who came in fifth and Meaghan Wizeman who scored by picking off two runners late.The Spartans will have a brief hiatus from competition next weekend as no meet is scheduled. They will resume their quest for an undefeated season on Friday, October 15 at the Saint E’s Invitational at Natirar in Far Hills. Student athletes will be asked to come to school in their team gear on that day and the entire student body will be asked to join in the chase for an undefeated season by supporting the team with the “Paint it Orange and Black” theme, where fellow students will be permitted to wear orange and black on that day to support the team.

Saint James School is a private, Catholic, co-educational school, fully accredited by Cognia. It is a vital, important ministry of the Church of Saint James and part of the Metuchen Diocesan educational system. To learn more about Saint James School, financial aid, and to schedule a tour, visit www.sjsbr.org.

This press release was produced by Saint James School. The views expressed here are the author's own.