Cross Country B

St. Paul's School

Date/Time Home/Away Type Field Location Score
10/14/2009 12:00 PM Home Game 20-39

Andover over SPS

Varsity score: Andover 20 SPS 39

JV score: Andover 21 SPS 36

One simple statistic tells the whole story: six Andover runners under 17:00. This is something we have never done on our course in one race in the twenty years of our 5K course, and the flood of six Andover runners in a seventeen-second span beginning at 16:42 simply overwhelmed Saint Paul’s.

We knew their front-runner Nick Sans had been winning all his races, some in record time, so our plan was for Renat Zalov to run with him as long as he could and make sure he secured second place, first if Sans would let him. The second half of our plan was for our pack of five to race the second SPS runner. We were confident we could be ahead of the SPS fourth and fifth runners, and our hope was to either surround or beat their second. As it turned out, the pack all slipped in before SPS could cross their second.

The race developed slowly, and all sixteen runners ran as a group on the Great Lawn loop and stayed pretty tight until the Sanctuary gates. By then Zalov and Sans had moved to the front, but Andover’s pack of Tim McLaughlin, Nick Kearns, Matt Appleby, Patrick Wolber, and James Hamilton were in close contact, together with three more SPS runners. Within the Sanctuary, however, the racers began to separate. Zalov and Sans stayed together to the Log Cabin, but on the back side Sans opened a considerable lead. Zalov began the race with a bad stomach, so he was unable to respond to the Sans surge. Nonetheless, he kept far enough ahead to separate from the pack while the sight of him in the long straight-aways inspired his teammates.

When the pack emerged from the Sanctuary, McLaughlin, Appleby, and Kearns were dogging the second SPS runner, changing places so often that they wore him out, and on the Great Lawn they put him away for good. Then Wolber and Hamilton closed the gap from behind and passed him as well. The times were impressive: Zalov in 16:42, Appleby in 16:48, McLaughlin in 16:51, Kearns in 16:54, Wolber in 16:56, and Hamilton in 16:58, personal bests for all but Zalov and McLaughlin. Chris Batchelder finished in 18:11 and Kian Ivey in 18:57.

The JV race was strong as well. From the start Andover’s Billy Murran and a SPS runner separated from the rest, and they stayed together through the Sanctuary gates. A little back Ben Talarico and Ryan Ramos ran with two SPS runners, and behind them Luke Hansen, Yu Sakai, and Fernando Ramos trailed another pair. By the time they all had reached the Log Cabin, the Andover runners had established their dominance, and they passed out of the Sanctuary gates in the order they would finish.

Murran finished in 18:06, a time that would have put him eleventh in the varsity race. The SPS runner who had battled Murran early slipped back closer to Talarico, who finished third in 18:30. Ryan Ramos crossed in fourth place in 18:44, out-kicking the second SPS runner who crossed just a second before Luke Hansen’s 18:47. Yu Sakai finished the scoring in seventh place at 18:58, and Fernando Ramos displaced the fourth and fifth SPS runners with his impressive 19:38. Also running well were Matthew Lloyd-Thomas (14th), Justin Stachtiaris (16th), Hayden Anziani (17th), Connor Frazier (22nd), Patrick Naughter and Nate Smith tied for 23rd, and Jack Sykes (25th).