CVC Rankings (Girls) for October 15

Introducing rankings from Track Mercer! Here is a list of teams and individuals that have risen to the top of Mercer County. Ranking XC teams inherently requires some subjectivity and guessing, since every race is different and it’s rare for teams to go head-to-head at full-strength in the regular season. So if you disagree with these rankings, I’m happy to be proven wrong!

Note: For now, these rankings only include CVC schools. Starting later this month, these rankings will expand to include non-CVC schools. Read the boys rankings here.

Girls Teams

#1 Princeton

Princeton is one of the best teams in the state, let alone the CVC. After a rustbuster at the Jerry Hart Invitational – which they almost swept, scoring 20 points – they’ve consistently sought out the toughest competition and then met the challenge. At the Bowdoin XC Classic, they beat out the #4 and #10 teams in New Jersey. At the Shore Coaches Invitational, they beat the #14 team. Most recently, at the Manhattan College XC Invitational, they beat the #2 team! After four straight weekends of hard running, Princeton may not race all-out at CVCs or sectionals – they rightly have their sights more set on big things at the group championships and the Meet of Champions – but they are so strong and so deep that they could probably win anyway.

#2 Hopewell Valley

Hopewell Valley hasn’t raced much – only twice in the past month – but they get points for quality over quantity. They won the TCNJ Invitational with a 20:35 average, and that was without getting any points from Elsie Rey-de-Castro, who was one of their top runners last year. At the Shore Coaches Invitational, Rey-de-Castro ran even faster than at TCNJ and was right up with #2 runner Anna Wilson. That helped them to 3rd place in the Varsity C race with a 21:19 team average, second best among Mercer County teams.

#3 West Windsor-Plainsboro North

West Windsor-Plainsboro North is hard to evaluate for two reasons. First, they’ve run full strength at only one 5K this year, the Shore Coaches Invitational. Second, they have a huge 1-5 spread. Allison Lee and Zui Chinchalkar are undoubtedly one of the best 1-2 punches in the state, but deeper teams like Hopewell Valley might be able to get four or five girls across before WW-P North’s third runner. They were the third best Mercer County team in the Shore Coaches Invitational merge, but it’s hard to predict how that polarized scoring will shake out in a smaller race.

#4 Allentown

Allentown has a very solid top four, thanks to the Wroblewski and Ruchelman sisters. If #5 runner Annie Gooley can close the gap a little bit, Allentown could grab a top-3 finish at the Mercer County Championship. In the merged results from the Shore Coaches Invitational merge, Allentown was 85 points back from WW-P North. But if you take out all the non-Mercer County teams, that deficit drops to only 10 points.

#5 West Windsor-Plainsboro South

West Windsor-Plainsboro South may not have any stars at the front of the race — though Yana Chheda has been moving up — but they have pretty good depth, as evidenced by their 21:49 average at the Six Flags Wild Safari Invitational, ahead of Notre Dame. The main question is how they will do on a more challenging course like Thompson Park. Only three girls from their varsity squad ran the Shore Coaches Invitational at Holmdel.

Girls Individuals

#1 Allison Lee (West Windsor-Plainsboro North) ran 18:47 at the Shore Coaches Invitational, a time that is #5 among all NJ runners at Holmdel this year. And she won her race by a massive 26 seconds, so one has to wonder what she could have run if she was pushed harder over the last two miles.

#2 Kajol Karra (Princeton) finished 23rd in the Eastern States Championship at the Manhattan College XC Invitational, and her time was the 7th fastest among all NJ runners that day. She finished behind her teammate Grace Hegedus at the Bowdoin XC Classic, but Karra takes the tiebreaker by winning the Jerry Hart Invitational in 18:25.

#3 Grace Hegedus (Princeton) has run four really good races at four big meets in four straight weeks: 2nd at the Jerry Hart Invitational (a 5K PR of 18:28), 9th in the Varsity II race at the Bowdoin XC Classic, 3rd in the Varsity B race at the Shore Coaches Invitational (a Holmdel PR of 19:27), and 28th at the Eastern States Championship at Manhattan College XC Invitational.

#4 Zui Chinchalkar (West Windsor-Plainsboro North) has only run one 5K invitational this year, but it was a good one, where she ran 19:39 at  Holmdel to get 4th place in the Varsity B race of the Shore Coaches Invitational. She opened the season with a 12:01 to win her race at the Thompson 2 Miler.

#5 Claire Dumont (Hopewell Valley) was just eight seconds behind Chinchalkar at the Shore Coaches Invitational (19:47) and only two seconds slower in her season-opening two-mile (12:03 at the Cherokee Challenge), so these two are close. Dumont also ran 18:47 at the TCNJ Invitational, one of the fastest times in the county this season.

The next three runners are also very close – they’ve all beaten each other at different races this year.

#6 Emilia Wroblewski (Allentown) opened the season by running 12:34 at the Cherokee Challenge and then 12:56 at the Thompson 2-Miler, putting her pretty far behind the other girls on this list. Two weeks later, however, she dropped a 19:18 at the speedy Six Flags course. That’s faster than her 3200 pace at the Cherokee Challenge! She backed that up by running 19:58 at Holmdel a week later, catching many girls in the last half of the race, including Teagan Walker and Izzy Meth.

#7 Teagan Walker (Ewing) ran two very fast 5Ks in September, a 19:11 at the Battle @ Ocean County and a 19:24 at the TCNJ Invitational. She didn’t run quite as well at the Shore Coaches Invitational – she was about 30 seconds back from Wroblewski and Meth – but we won’t put too much stock into one off day.

#8 Izzy Meth (Lawrence) hasn’t yet dropped a sub-19:20 on a fast course like Wroblewski and Walker have, but she’s been very consistent this season: 20:00 at TCNJ, 20:00 at Shore Coaches, and 19:54 at XC Fall Classic. Don’t be surprised if she breaks that consistency with a much faster time once her postseason taper kicks in.

#9 Alaina Sabo (Notre Dame) has been the top freshman this year so far, running a PR of 19:02 at the Six Flags Wild Safari Invitational and then finishing 8th at the XC Fall Classic in 20:06, a couple of seconds ahead of fellow freshman-of-the-year candidate Rosemary Warren.

#10 Phoenix Roth (Princeton), a sophomore in her first year of XC, has run a 5K PR of 19:47 at the Jerry Hart Invitational. But her more impressive results were probably running 20:33 for 12th at the Shore Coaches Invitational Varsity B race and getting 38th in the fastest race at the Manhattan College XC Invitational.

Bubble: Eowyn Deess (Princeton) finished right with Roth at the Manhattan College XC Invitational. … Rosemary Warren (Princeton) finished right behind Sabo at the XC Fall Classic, and ahead of Roth at the Bowdoin XC Classic.