Cherokee Challenge 2024
The Cherokee Challenge, in neighboring Burlington County, is where most Mercer County schools start their season every year. It’s a unique meet in at least two ways: (1) the course is only 3200m long, and (2) all runners are split up by graduation class, even runners from the same school. With a short course and no team scores, the Cherokee Challenge makes for a great, low-key way to ease into the season.
That’s not to say that we can’t dig into the results and get some insight into how Mercer County teams are looking this year! Here are some of my takeaways from the Cherokee Challenge this past Saturday. (See here for full results.)
Boys Results
Although the graduation classes were run separately, MileSplit helpfully merges the results to give us a picture of what the race might’ve looked like in a traditional team format. (Link here.) In that hypothetical race, here is how Mercer County schools compared to each other and to the 75 New Jersey schools that ran full boys teams:
#9 Notre Dame (10:54 average)
#13 Lawrenceville School (11:03 average)
#20 Allentown (11:12 average)
#22 Hightstown (11:15 average)
#30 Robbinsville (11:38 average)
#43 Ewing (12:09 average)
#46 Princeton Day School (12:08 average)
#65 Trenton Central (12:57 average)
#70 Lawrence (13:29 average)
#71 Hun School (13:58 average)
Notre Dame was led by Tarun Kovoor, who was also the top runner from Mercer County, placing 7th in the seniors’ race and 8th in the overall merged New Jersey results. His time of 10:05 was an impressive season opener and cut over 40 seconds off his time from last year. Kovoor didn’t run outdoor track this past spring, but looks like he’s back and better than ever.
The Cherokee Challenge also gave us our first glimpse of this year’s freshman class, and Lawrenceville seems to have gotten the biggest boost from their newcomers. Naren Maharana (10:47 for 4th in the freshman race) and Gio Juarez (11:12 for 9th) look poised to become immediate contributors for the Big Red. Another freshman who showed big potential is Lawrence’s Harrison Petrick, who ran 11:48 for 21st in his race.
Looks like the Allentown boys put together some strong summer training! Three of them broke 11:00 on the 3200m course: Landon Kent (10:49), John O’Leary (10:54), and Armit Moehringer (10:55). That’s not too far off their track 3200m PRs — very impressive given the grass, turns, and traffic they had to navigate on Saturday.
You may recall from my XC preview post that a big question coming into the season was whether Burke Thompson (Hightstown) — who was one of Mercer County’s best distance runners this past spring — would pick XC or football this fall. Good news, he’s here! His first-ever XC invitational result was a 10:34 to finish 27th in the senior race, a very solid debut.
Girls Results
As with the boys results, MileSplit merged all the girls results into one big hypothetical race. (Link here.) Here’s how the Mercer County girls teams stacked up against each other and the 65 complete teams from across New Jersey.
#9 Hopewell Valley (13:07 average)
#21 Lawrenceville School (13:46 average)
#22 Allentown (13:44 average)
#29 Notre Dame (14:12 average)
#31 Robbinsville (14:33 average)
#40 Princeton Day (14:53 average)
#43 Hightstown (14:49 average)
#55 Lawrence (15:48 average)
#64 Trenton Central (21:24 average)
The Trenton Central girls team deserves a special shoutout. With Rachael Ogungbangbe, Aaliyah Hall, Nathalie Camara, Ashley Solis, and Yarixa Macolas Corea all crossing the finish line, Trenton Central fielded its first complete girls team at this meet in over 10 years. Runners at most school take it for granted that they’ll have teammate to run with and get a team score in the end, but that’s not always an simple feat. So well done, Trenton Central girls!
As for individuals, Teagan Walker (Ewing) was the county’s top finisher with a 11:59 for 7th in the senior race, just a few second ahead of Claire Dumont (Hopewell Valley), who got 12:03 for 9th. Even in the merged results, both girls were top 10 among New Jersey runners.
In her first XC invitational, sophomore Anna Wilson (Hopewell Valley) earned a top-10 finish in the sophomore race, finishing 8th in 12:45. That’s a great sign for Hopewell Valley, who returned most of their runners from last year and were already among the top teams in the state, even before Wilson’s resurgence. Rounding out Hopewell Valley’s top five on Saturday were Maddie LaChance, Elsie Rey-de-Castro, and Sophia Pellegrino, all under 13:45. A promising start to a big year!
The freshman race especially revealed a lot of new talent and new names to watch, with Mercer County putting three in the top ten of the freshman race. Hightstown’s Siena Rivera was 2nd in 12:14, Notre Dame’s Alaina Sabo was 5th in 12:31, and Lawrenceville’s Gigi Aitken-Davies was 10th in 12:50. We’ll look forward to seeing those girls make their mark in Mercer County over the next four years.