New Canaan Girls Cross Country 6th, Boys 10th at FCIAC Championships

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.

‘We Won It for Him’: Taben Leads New Canaan Field Hockey Over Darien for FCIAC Crown

Two weeks ago this Saturday, field hockey was the last thing on Isabel Taben’s mind. That evening, the Rams senior co-captain’s father Charlie suffered a heart attack. It was Isabel who ran into the street to flag down the first responders after they called 911. The medics saved his life. Charlie was rushed to the hospital, where he ultimately recovered from cardiac arrest.

NCHS Cross Country Teams Finish 7th at FCIAC Championships

Both the boys and girls NCHS cross country teams finished seventh at Monday’s FCIAC Championship race at Waveny Park. And although the results looked the same on paper, they were interpreted quite differently from the respective coaches of the two squads. “Overall thoughts…probably not happy,” boys head coach Bill Martin told NewCanaanite.com. “We had a couple of boys perform average, and it looks like we might have an injury to my top runner.”

That top runner, senior co-captain Alex Ellsworth, finished 19th overall and first for the Rams with a time of 16:34 over the 5-kilometer course, despite experiencing some pain in his rib cage during the race. As to Ellsworth’s status for Saturday’s State Championship race at Wickham Park in Manchester, Martin feels confident his star runner will fight through the injury.