Weekend Preview for September 28

After a busy week where many schools had their last duel meets of the season and celebrated senior day – congrats, seniors! – most teams are taking this weekend off. But there a handful of schools racing on Saturday, taking advantage of opportunities to run fast or to get more experience on courses they’ll see this postseason.

Here is a short preview of who’s running where, along with some matchups to keep an eye on. With sectionals just about a month away, this weekend is a good chance to start seeing how Mercer County schools stack up against other teams in Central Jersey. 

Six Flags Wild Safari Invitational

The mostly pancake-flat course at the Six Flags Wild Safari Invitational is a good opportunity for athletes to run a fast time – assuming they aren’t conserving energy to ride the rides afterwards!

With over 150 schools competing, the meet is split into three different varsity races based on school size. West Windsor-Plainsboro South and Hightstown will run in the Varsity A race, where they’ll face off against two other schools from Central Group 4, Monroe Township and Manalapan. (Freehold Township will also be there, but in the Varsity B race.) Notre Dame will run in the Varsity B race, and Allentown will be in the Varsity C race.

Thompson Park Class Meet

Hamilton West, Steinert, Nottingham, and West Windsor-Plainsboro North are heading to the Thompson Park Class Meet, where they’ll get to run on the course that will host Central Jersey sectionals. WW-P North was there just a couple of weeks ago for the Thompson 2 Miler, but this is the first go at Thompson Park for the three Hamilton schools.

Central Group 3 rivals Middletown South and Jackson Liberty will be competing here also. Like at the Thompson 2 Miler, this meet divides runners by graduation class rather than having full teams run together – but you know we’ll look at the merged results to get a sense of the team competition anyway.

Bowdoin XC Classic

Princeton is the only Mercer County school going across the border for the Bowdoin XC Classic. This New York meet will nonetheless host the stiffest New Jersey competition, as many of the top schools in the state want to get experience on the challenging Bowdoin Park course that will host the NXN Northeast Regional meet in late November.

The Princeton girls, ranked No. 6 in the state by NJ Advance Media, will face off against No. 1 Union Catholic, No. 3 Ridgewood, No. 5 Manalapan, and No. 10 Haddonfield. Princeton’s matchup against Manalapan, on both the girls and boys side, will be especially worth watching, since they’ll square off later this season for the highly competitive Group 4 Central championship.

For anyone who hasn’t run at Bowdoin Park, here’s a look at its elevation profile:

Now let’s compare that to the elevation profile at the Six Flags Wild Safari Invitational:

This is why it’s hard to compare times across meets. On the plus side, the variety is part of what makes XC fun!