On Tuesday, September 16, the Boys and Girls Cross Country teams took on the Whitman-Hanson Panthers at their home course in Hingham. The windy course takes the runners around the soccer, lacrosse, and softball fields, as well as by the tennis courts and briefly by the turf. Although the 2.98 mile course is relatively flat, the beating sun can wear down the runners when they are not running along the tree line. Junior Caroline Newth said, “Regardless of the intense sun, our gritty group of girls brought us to victory.”
The Hingham teams were both coming off of losses from their biggest rival, Marshfield, so they were determined to get the win. The boys and girls teams both defeated the Panthers, by a significant amount; the score of the boys and girls races were 21-36 and 21-40, respectively. In cross country the lowest score wins, similar to golf. The scoring of the races is based on the top seven runners of each team. Depending on where each of the top seven runners places, that adds a certain amount of points to their team’s total score. For example, the first place runner for the girl’s race was from Whitman-Hanson, and she got her team 1 point because she was in first place. The next runner to cross the finish line was a Hingham runner who got 2 points because of her placement.
The boys race was led by senior captain, Gavin Anderson and one of Whitman-Hanson’s seniors, Benjamin Andrews for most of the race. Sadly, Whitman-Hanson took home the first place spot, but Hingham’s Gavin Anderson, Will Watts, Tommy Simpson, and Mitch Burm took home the second, third, forth, and fifth place spots, automatically winning the race for Hingham. There were also many personal bests from all ages on the team. Senior captain Tommy Simpson stated, “The boys dug deep, got some big PRs (personal records), and beat the kids next to us.”
The girls race, led by sophomore Casey Gately, senior captain Sophia McDougall, and junior Ally Mildrum, was dominated by Hingham runners. Kaitlyn Howard from Whitman-Hanson barely beat out Casey Gately for first place, but similarly to the boys, Hingham took the next four places. There was one other Whitman-Hanson runner and then 3 more Hingham runners, Caroline Newth, Ellie Rogers, and Sam Downes, who pushed Whitman-Hansons’s third runner down to tenth place. The girls cross country coach, as well as Hingham’s mathematics director, David Jewett said in an interview, “I was very impressed with how disciplined the entire team ran and their ability to run really hard in the third mile. I would say that at a mile and a half into the race, Whitman-Hanson was winning the meet and then we had 8 runners overtake pretty much their entire team by working together in the third mile.” Later in the interview he expressed, “I was very happy for Sophia McDougall who was twenty five seconds faster than the week before, and I thought our two freshmen Sam Downes, who scored 7th for us for the second week in a row, and Skyla Austin, who had a minute and 20 second personal best, both did amazing. I was very impressed with Casey Gatley’s ability to beat the race and be our number one runner for 2 weeks in a row.”
A special thank you goes out to the parents, coaches, and officials who came to support the runners and make this race possible. “Having people cheer for you makes it so much easier. The support system for the team is so great and lifts me up while I am running. They make me want to do my best,” junior Coco Berube said after the race. The cheering from all points on the course gives the runners a boost of energy to push through the exhaustion and keep running.
Although both the boys and girls teams are small, they still have the grit and determination to compete with anyone. However, if yourself or someone you know does not play a fall sport, you should definitely try cross country. It is a great community where everyone supports each other and pushes each other to do their best, and it’s an amazing way to stay in shape as well as exercise every day.
