Junior Drew Davis (l) and sophomore Cali Brannan (r) finished 1-2 for the Rams at the FCIAC Cross Country Championships at Waveny Park, Oct. 21, 2015. Credit: Terry Dinan
Scenes from the FCIAC Cross Country Championships at Waveny Park, Oct. 21, 2015. Credit: Terry Dinan
After training in weather that felt more like fall–and over this past weekend, winter–during the days leading up to Wednesday’s FCIAC Cross Country Championships; on race day it resembled late-summer with the sun shining brightly on Waveny and a temperature near 75 degrees.
So is the byproduct of running cross country in New England.
And in what is arguably the best high school cross country conference in all of New England, the New Canaan girls team finished sixth while the New Canaan boys team finished tenth in Wednesday afternoon’s FCIAC Championships.
“I’m really, really pleased,” girls head coach Art Brown told NewCanaanite.com. “Going in, I thought we had a shot at [defeating] Ludlowe and Darien and we beat them today, which was very satisfying. A lot of the girls ran well. I was very impressed with Drew Davis who wasn’t running at a hundred percent today; Lauren Carlson wasn’t a hundred percent either. But they both gave me great efforts. They certainly contributed to our great effort today. I’m very proud.”
Leading the way for the girls was Davis. The junior was the first Ram to cross the finish line on the 4-kilometer course, clocking in at 16:06, good for 24th place overall–a finish that puts her on the 2015 All-FCIAC Second Team.
“My goal was to be on the All-FCIAC team and I’m really happy that I get to be on that, because that’s what I’ve been working for all season,” Davis said. “That race [today] was really tough for me. I’ve been injured the past week so I wasn’t able to do as much before the race as I should which made the race tough, both mentally and physically. But I was just trying to do my best to envision the race beforehand and just try to motivate myself throughout, and I did well in the end.”
Joining Davis with All-FCIAC Second Team honors is her teammate, sophomore Cali Brannan, whose time of 16:17 was a finish good enough to place 29th, making her the penultimate member of the All-FCIAC group.
“It was a very hot day–a lot hotter than last year,” Brannan said. “There was a lot of competition. Probably one of the hardest races I’ve ever ran. And I ended up 29th which means I made it on to the All-FCIAC team. I’m relieved that I made that because that was my goal this season.”
Rounding out the New Canaan scoring was senior co-captain Amanda Dobbin (32nd, 16:21), sophomore Leigh Charlton (43rd, 16:50), junior Lauren Carlson (46th, 16:57), senior co-captain Lindsay Miller (57th, 17:22), sophomore Chloe McAuliffe (58th, 17:25) and junior Megan Waldron was the final Ram to cross the finish line at 17:28.
The Rams scored 174 points, falling to overall champion Ridgefield. Staples senior and Stanford-bound All-American Hannah DiBalsi was the race’s individual winner, running a speedy 14:05, which–while not as fast as her time in this race last year (13:37)–bested her closest competitor by 40 seconds.
Meanwhile, boys head coach Bill Martin was disappointed in his team’s tenth place finish but knows that better days are yet to come.
“I know the boys will be disappointed when they hear that they finished tenth,” Coach Martin told NewCanaanite.com. “And I’m disappointed for them because they’ve worked so hard and really rallied around each other for what needs to be done during a season. It’s the highest, lowest, however you want to phrase it, that we’ve finished in the four years I’ve been here. We’re not a deep team. The team’s very young without a lot of depth. So if one of our top guys has an off day, it hurts the overall [score]. Unfortunately one of our boys, Aidan Buck, is dehydrated. He was our number-two man all season; he’s very consistent, team leader and captain. Obviously a senior wants to run his last [FCIAC] race here–it just didn’t work out for him.”
Junior Michael St. George was the first Ram to cross the finish line on the 5K course, clocking in at 17:21, good for 36th place overall. And behind him were sophomore Alex Urbahn (53rd, 17:52), sophomore Henry Asker (56th, 18:00), senior co-captain Ryan McGough (57th, 18:01), senior co-captain Patrick Blasco (61st, 18:09), Jake Grigsby (63rd, 18:12), Faustino Cortina (67th, 18:22) with Buck crossing the finish line at 18:40.
“We had a good race from Michael St. George,” said Martin. “He didn’t run great, but he ran good. It was a solid performance and he was still our first guy. But instead of us finishing with a junior and senior as our first two; we go junior, sophomore, and then have another sophomore after that, rather than my seniors being in there. We have three senior captains and they finished out of the top three on our team.”
As a team, New Canaan scored 263 points, well behind the champion Danbury who edged Staples by three points to achieve their second consecutive FCIAC crown, and 14th in the last 16 years. Brien McMahon’s Eric Van Der Els placed first in the race with a time of 15:24.
