NJSIAA Sectionals: Girls Recap
Photos taken by TSP Images for MileSplit.
NJSIAA Sectionals is the pinnacle of the XC season for many Mercer County teams, and tons of runners rose to the occasion and lifted their Thompson Park PRs to new heights. With spots at the group championships on the line — the top five teams in each group qualify, along with any individuals in the top 15 — it made for four hours of nonstop excitement!
Below are highlights for each Mercer County girls teams. Congrats to everyone moving on to Holmdel next week! Click here for the boys recap.
Group 3 Girls
After casually cruising at course-record pace for two miles alongside Northern Burlington’s Liliah Gordon – a Foot Locker finalist and two-time defending group champion – the unintimidated Allison Lee (West Windsor-Plainsboro North) put the pedal down and produced one of the most astonishing performances in New Jersey this season: a 26-second victory in 17:46.2, shattering the Thompson Park course record of 18:02. Lee is putting together a historic XC season, and she’s proven to be absolutely brilliant at running hills, which bodes well for Holmdel Park.
Behind Lee’s jaw-dropping finish were several other performances that were stunning in their own right. Claire Dumont (Hopewell Valley) and Zui Chinchalkar (West Windsor-Plainsboro North), whose duel over the final 800m last week resulted in big Thompson Park PRs for both of them, once again did battle down the homestretch. But this time it was 15 seconds faster and the order was flipped, with Dumont (4th in 18:52) succeeded in overtaking Chinchalkar (5th in 18:55) on the final straightaway. Dumont rose to 2nd on the Bulldogs’ all-time Thompson Park list, and Chinchalkar is now 3rd on the Knights’ list.
Another noteworthy individual performance came from Ewing’s Teagan Walker. The senior had previously run between 20:06 and 20:20 four different times at Thompson Park, and she was down to her last shot on the course. Putting it all on the line, she went out hard and then kept it going all the way through the finish, crushing the 20-minute barrier with a 19:40 for 9th place!
In the team competition, Hopewell Valley had a super impressive run to get 3rd place with 74 points, just ahead of NJ #18 WW-P North (77 points) and just behind NJ #7 Middletown South (65 points). Hopewell Valley got a huge boost from the return of Sydney Young, who was a top track runner this past spring but hadn’t run an XC race this fall until last week’s JV meet. Back in the varsity lineup, she started out very conservatively but surged over the last two miles to finish as Hopewell Valley’s #2 girl in 20:02, just a few seconds off her Thompson Park PR from last year. Maddie LaChance also had an awesome race, running an aggressive second mile and holding on to finish in 20:03, a 30-second PR for her.
West Windsor-Plainsboro North finished 4th to punch their ticket to groups. They may have been edged by a reinforced Hopewell Valley team, but the Knights still ran really, really well. In addition to huge runs by Lee and Chinchalkar up front, Juliette Halpin (22nd in 20:34) and Sara Secora (23rd in 20:38) both PR’d by 15+ seconds to move into 18th and 19th on the Knights’ all-time Thompson Park list. Overall, the Knights averaged 19:53, which was 17 seconds faster than last week.
Steinert finished 7th in Group 3. They were led by junior Lisette Zamichieli (31st in 21:19), who missed the entire regular season but rapidly regained form this postseason, as shown in this 44-second improvement over last week. Senior Keira Kildea matched her result from last week, and sophomore Ashley Foster cut 20 seconds to break 22:00 at Thompson Park for the first time.
Lawrence was led by their star runner Izzy Meth, who qualified for the group championships by finishing 12th in 19:56. Meth has now broken 20:00 in eight straight races at Thompson Park and Holmdel Park!
Group 2 Girls
Allentown finished 2nd in Group 2 to qualify for the group championships! They were led by Emilia Wroblewski, who missed last week’s race but returned this week with a 20:24 to medal in 9th place. Also very impressive was Madeline Ruchelman, who finished just three places back in 20:52 for 12th, her first time under 21:00 at Thompson Park. And perhaps the most surprising of all was junior Annie Gooley, who had been the Redbirds’ fifth girl for most of the year before a recent postseason surge. On Saturday, she finished 20th in 21:45, a Thompson Park PR by 40 seconds.
The Robbinsville girls missed out on qualifying for the group championships by a heartbreaking two points. But they should hold their heads high, because they ran much better than anyone expected and averaged a full minute faster than last week! Big races from junior Meghann Hansen and freshman Abigail Andrus were a big reason for that improvement. And the highlight was senior Kellianne White running 20:54 to PR by 20+ seconds and qualify for the group championships as an individual!
Group 4 Girls
The Group 4 girls race was one of the most anticipated races of the day, featuring three of the best teams in the state: #3 Princeton, #4 Freehold Township, and #13 Manalapan. The showdown’s outcome can be summed up by quoting a Freehold coach at the two-mile marker. Each team’s top three had gone through and the race seemed tight, so the Freehold coach was letting his fourth girl know where the other Princeton girls were. He just wasn’t expecting them to all be right there, as he called out with increasing amounts of surprise and alarm: “That [in front of you] is Princeton! And the next girl is Princeton! And the two girls after that are Princeton!”
Sure enough, that pack of four – Phoenix Roth, Florica Eleches-Lipsitz, Rosemary Warren, and Sevanne Knoch – went 15-16-17-18 and slammed the door on their sectional rivals. Princeton ended up with 49 points, 15 ahead of Freehold and 25 ahead of Manalapan. Roth (15th in 19:44) and Eleches-Lipsitz (16th in 19:48) had particularly impressive races, both running overall 5K PRs even on a hilly course.
That’s not to say that Princeton’s top three weren’t at least as impressive! Kajol Karra and Grace Hegedus boldly ran with a pack that included four girls ranked in top 17 in the state, and they hung on spectacularly. Karra got 4th in 18:38 and Hegedus got 6th in 18:49, with both times being 10+ seconds faster than last week. Those are the 9th and 12th fastest times ever run by a Mercer County girl at Thompson Park. Eowyn Deess, who had a breakthrough race last week, kicked it up yet another notch this week with a 21-second improvement. She led the chase pack the whole way and took 8th in 19:11. Princeton is looking ready for a few more big races at Holmdel and beyond!
West Windsor-Plainsboro South finished 7th in Group 4, edging Hillsborough on a tiebreaker! Yana Chheda (24th in 20:42) had an awesome race, cutting 24 seconds off her time from last week and breaking 21:00 at Thompson Park for the first time. Their tiebreaking sixth girl was Shivani Joshi, who ran the JV meet last week but came through for varsity this week with a solid debut at Thompson Park, finishing 10 places ahead of Hillsborough’s sixth girl.
Hightstown finished 11th place in Group 4, led by Siena Rivera’s 30th-place finish. They also got exceptional performances from Madalyne Ng (42nd in 21:48) and Victoria Mora (51st in 22:10) who both ran their best XC races ever and set new 5K PRs. In particular, the senior Mora capped her season with an exclamation mark, running almost two minutes faster than she had for most of her XC career.