I love Cross Country. I love the preparation required during the summer months. I love the challenge of creating training plans to accommodate a team that has a number of ability levels. I love analyzing data to create those plans and I love make comparisons between our team and our opponents. I enjoy submitting results to our AD and Administration to let them know how well our team performed, or if the team didn’t fare as well as hoped, the individuals that stood out in a loss. I love practice and seeing young student-athletes gain fitness and confidence through the physical effort required by this sport. And I love to see that effort translate into improvement and accomplishment. And if I had to cite one aspect of Cross Country I love most, it would be that: improvement and accomplishment. One of the awards we present each season is to the boy and girl athlete who has made the most dramatic improvement between last fall and this fall. And this award serves to illustrate why this sport goes well beyond the finish line because improvement represents the culmination of the preparation, effort and enjoyment I speak of. And this year we have two team members very deserving of this award. In 2022, Lauren Smith joined us after a year of freshman soccer and went about quietly (very quietly in fact) showing us that she had potential as a runner. She competed in 5 of our 6 dual meets with her best race a 9th place finish at Duxbury where she scored her first point in competition. When it came time to choose our Divisional Meet runners, she had posted the team’s 8th best 5K with a time of 24:21. So while she was close to being selected, she missed by a minute or so. Perhaps motivated by that, she came into this season well prepared and immediately made her presence felt.
In this season’s first meet she was among the top 5 finishers for our girls at Marshfield, a tough team and a tougher place to run. The next week she matched that against Silver Lake. And in week 3 against Plymouth North, while showing continued improvement, she finished 3rd for the team. She continued to improve her times in the following weeks with a 4th place at Hingham, 3rd against Duxbury, a 2nd at Franklin Park in the Catholic Memorial Invitational and a 2nd at the Patriot League Championship. And finally, at the Divisional Meet in Wrentham she was the 3rd finisher for the team with a new Personal Record of 21:31 in the 5K while helping the girls’ team qualify for the All-State Championship. Her finish in that race was just under a 3:00 minute improvement from the previous season; the largest improvement among our girls; again, all very quietly. Lauren scored a single point in 2022 but scored in all 9 meets this year in which the girls competed (the only girl to do so, in fact.) Congratulations to a soft-spoken young lady who makes noise on the XC course and is on course to become an even better runner in 2024, Lauren Smith.
Improvement
and accomplishment; what I love most about this sport. And for a coach these achievements can be
measured quite easily in Cross Country, with a stopwatch. But for the athlete, there is always the
physical and mental challenge in meeting goals and expectations. Improvement
doesn’t come easy. In addition to
preparation and effort, cross country tests an individual’s endurance, strength
and agility. It emphasizes the mental toughness needed to overcome obstacles
and push through pain. And our award for
the most improved boy runner goes to a boy who has shown those abilities since
he joined us a freshman last year, Caleb Poth. Any long-time runner remembers at the outset,
running is chore, hard work; an effort that often makes a newcomer to this
sport wonder if he or she should look elsewhere. Injury and pain almost always accompany the
start of a running program, and many decide to abandon the effort. In 2022 Caleb, I believe dealt with
both injury and pain on his way to becoming a true athlete. In 2022 Caleb
showed the desire needed to work through that pain. In the first three weeks of the 2022 season
in fact, Caleb ran consistently, but in week four at Plymouth North he hit a
wall of sorts and ran for him, a disappointing race. But Caleb is tenacious and persistent. He continued to work through pain and fatigue
and ultimately competed in each dual meet during the season. He closed out his 2022 Cross Country season in
the JV Meet at the Patriot League Championship where he ran his best 5K time of
that year finishing 85th out
of 96 runners, in 24:47. Caleb got a
taste of accomplishment in 2022 and vowed to come back stronger in 2023.
This year, Caleb, like Lauren, was prepared coming into the season. He experienced little pain and showed the effort of a young man on a mission to improve. And improve, he did: in dramatic fashion. No, he didn’t win any races. In fact, he didn’t score any points. But he practiced hard each day in an effort to get better and slowly but surely, he climbed in the team ranking. Before it was over Caleb had posted the 7th best 5k time among the boys with his 20:21 finish, again at the Patriot League Championship where he finished 75th out of 98 runners, this time in the Varsity race. His improvement over 2022’s best time was an amazing 4:26, about 2 ½ minutes better than the improvement of any of his teammates. This season provided many obstacles and challenges for Caleb, all of which he dealt with capably and professionally. Congratulations to Caleb Poth on his amazing accomplishments this year. He has put the coaches on notice by telling us he anticipates further improvement in the fall of 2024. None of us doubt his doing just that.
Cross
Country provides an opportunity to enjoy the camaraderie and sense of community
that exists within a team. The common experiences found in the sports
challenges, its victories and yes, in its losses, bring team members closer
together and strong bonds are formed along with lifelong friendships. Evidence of that can be found in not only the
relationship among the coaching staff, but even more so in the relationships we
have with others as a result of our having taken up distance running
ourselves. However, team unity was not
in abundance this year, and I’ll take the blame for that. And I’ll work hard to resolve that in the
future. But nonetheless there were many
of those lifelong friendships formed that I spoke of earlier. One such friendship is that between Alex
Kehayias and McKenna McCarthy, coincidentally our Boys and Girls Most Valuable
Players this season.
Alex, a senior,
served as team Captain this fall and was Whitman-Hanson’s top finisher in each
of the team’s eight meets this season.
Alex established a new 5K Personal Record with an impressive 17:04
finish at the Patriot League Championship at Hingham. He was selected as a Patriot League
All-Star. He placed 45th at
the MIAA Divisional (D2) Meet at Wrentham in which he completed in an
impressive time of 17:35.
Junior
McKenna McCarthy was the Panthers top finisher in each of the team’s meets this
season and finished behind only a total of five perennial Patriot League
All-Stars during the dual meet segment of the season. McKenna established a new 5K Personal Record
of 19:58 in the team’s win over Duxbury.
McKenna was a unanimous Patriot League All-Star selection. McKenna finished 14th at the
Division 2 State Qualifier in Wrentham and 46th at the Divisional
Meet of Champions at Fort Devens.
Cross Country, like most sports, provides us all the chance to celebrate individual achievements and we acknowledge a great number of those with these two student-athletes. Cross Country has provided both Alex and McKenna personal growth opportunities and a chance to discover their potential. Each will establish new goals again next year as Alex heads to Suffolk University as a member of the Cross Country and Track teams, while McKenna will return for her Senior year at Whitman-Hanson. I’m excited to see where it takes them.
It’s my
opinion that participating in Cross Country provides an athlete with invaluable
life skills and lessons. Discipline immediately comes to
mind. We’ve just seen where athletes
that participate in practice each day and put forth a genuine effort at each
of those practices, accomplish great things.
It’s like any task. Whether it’s
your academics, your job, your relationships with others; you’ll only succeed
with consistent and meaningful effort. You have to work at it. Time-management skills can be greatly
enhanced through participating in athletics.
Each day you’re asked to set aside a specific block of time for
practice. Giving similar attention to
other aspects of your life such as homework, nutrition, time with your family
and friends, and rest and relaxation, all very necessary for a happy and
healthy life, will ensure that you get to everything you should be getting
to. Less stress, less anxiety, less
grief. Of course, nobody lives that
perfect life forever. Things
happen. Obstacles and events
occasionally get in the way of your routine.
Often times these obstacles are quite impactful. Illness, injury, at times, chaos, can be
terribly distracting, and can get in the way of doing what we need to do. But what this sport teaches us is resilience. We overcome those obstacles, move on from them,
and most often we’re better for having done so. And Cross Country, a goal-oriented sport,
continuously reminds us of the fact that there is always a better day ahead. If
you don’t achieve that goal today, you may tomorrow. And Cross Country teaches us that commitment, the genuine and consistent
effort I’ve been talking about, whether it is applied to this sport or in any
other meaningful endeavor we take on, will result in us reaching our full
potential for success and happiness.
Our next
award goes to an individual who has provided a benchmark this year for that commitment. You are already aware of some of his
accomplishments during the season, all a by-product of his dedication to
improvement. He is the sole member of
this year’s team to be in attendance and participate in each practice and every
meet, Alex Kehayias, this year's recipient of the team's Commitment Award.
Of course,
individual achievements for our student athletes aren’t limited to
accomplishments on the Cross-Country course or the Track. Of greater importance, and I want to stress
that; of greater importance, is what these student-athletes accomplish in the
classroom. High grades and outstanding
GPAs have been a hallmark of every team I’ve coached in Cross Country. A far wiser, and older, coach once told me
that the best recruits for Cross Country are not found in the gym class, they
are found in the math class. And I tend
to agree. They are a very intelligent
group overall. And although
Whitman-Hanson doesn’t rank its students and GPAs aren’t available to coaches,
we do have access to grades for the primary purpose of counseling those
students with problems or in danger of losing his/her eligibility. Those lists for this sport, where existent, are
very short. We don’t see a lot of Ds or
Fs. We pretty much see kids with one or
two Cs. When I speak with those students,
I almost always learn their deficiency is the result of either a missed exam
which will be made up, or an assignment which will be submitted within a short
time. Within a week or two, the matter
is usually resolved favorably. There are
those kids who never make those lists and whose grades are extremely
impressive. In fact, there are many
members of the team who should be acknowledged for their academic
achievements. It makes it difficult to
single out athletes among that large group of deserving kids for the
Scholar-Athlete Award, but this year there are two standouts who are high
achievers: not only within Cross Country but in the far more important realm of
academics. And those students, both seniors,
are Shane Johnson and Lynn McCoy. It is
important to note that both Shane and Lynn have been outstanding students since
they arrived at Whitman-Hanson. The consistency
and hard work they’ve displayed in sports is a reflection of what each brings
to the classroom. They’ve chosen to
follow the same path in athletics as they have in academics; a path that will
undoubtedly serve each of them well in the years to come. We’ll miss Shane and Lynn next year, but we
can look forward to others taking their places.
We know others are ready to follow their lead and take on the role of
leaders in the classroom and in Cross Country.
Two of our
younger student-athletes appear to be following comparable routes as Shane and
Lynn: both are very good students and impressive athletes and each season we
recognize a member of both the Boys and the Girls team with the
Rookie-of-the-Year Award. This award is
presented to the first-year athlete who makes the greatest impact on team
results, but it takes into consideration traits beyond the finish line. These kids are committed to running,
hard-working in practice, respectful to both teammates and the coaches, and
quite honestly children any parent should be enormously proud of. The Cross-Country Rookies- of-the-Year for
2023 are Sophomores Haley Gillis and Ben Andrews.
Haley joined
Cross Country with no expectation of even running a 5K. In her first season of Track and Field this
past spring she participated in four events: the 100, 200, and 4 X 100 Meter
races, along with the High Jump. After a
week or so of working with Coach S’s group (formerly known as the Mod Squad) at
practice this fall, I asked Haley to consider running with Coach Coletti’s
group, made up of mostly newcomers to the sport of Cross Country. I asked that she simply try distance running
and let her know that I saw potential in her as a distance runner. I also told Haley that if she didn’t like it,
she could return to Coach S’s group if she wished. But from the moment she started running with
the distance crew she seemed to not only enjoy it, but she rapidly
improved. She didn’t compete in our
first meet at Marshfield, but in her first meet at Silver Lake, Haley finished
3rd among the Panther girls, and the following week against Plymouth
North she ran 4th among her teammates. She dropped to 5th at Hingham, no
surprise given her effort in her new event over the first few weeks of distance
running. But 3 weeks later she was the
team’s 3rd place finisher in the Patriot League Varsity Championship
with a time of 22:46. And two weeks
following the League Championship, Haley was a major factor in the team’s
qualifying for the State Championship when she ran the team’s 2nd
best time of 21:25 at the Division 2 State Qualifying Meet. She finished 24th
overall and established her current Personal Record in that race. The following week she closed out her season
finishing 3rd for the team at the Divisional State Championship. So, in less than two months, Haley both began
her distance running journey and accomplished incredible success as a
distance runner. I’m looking forward to
watching her progress over the next two years and feel she will undoubtedly
become one of our league’s top athletes.
Ben Andrews
path to becoming the terrific distance runner he is, while far different than
Haley’s, parallels it in many ways. He too is a sophomore running his first
season of Cross Country. Ben had also
participated in Track and Field but had already established himself as an
excellent distance runner while exclusively running the Mile and 2 Mile, where
he holds Personal Records of 5:08 (in the Mile) and 11:11 (in the 2 Mile.) Ben played a year of soccer
before joining us at Cross Country this past fall. But he had some experience with the 5K having
competed in a number of local races, some of which he won. We were elated when Ben decided to join us in
Cross Country this past fall, and expectations for him were high. And Ben delivered. While he ran on a team with many
experienced upperclassmen, he climbed the ranks quickly, and stayed there, as
the team’s 3rd place finisher at Silver Lake and at home versus
Plymouth North, and the Panthers’ 2nd place finisher in his other
six races during the season. He showed
extraordinary durability in maintaining his practice and racing schedule, along
with the dedication and commitment we love seeing in our student-athletes. My own personal goal for Ben was to see him
run a sub 18:00 minute 5k which he achieved at the Patriot League Championship
where he established his current personal record of 17:59. At the Division 2 State Qualifier at Wrentham
he ran an impressive 18:02 on a far more difficult course than Hingham in what
I thought was Ben’s best race of the season and a precursor to what we expect
to see from Ben in the years to come. Ben, like Haley, not only made a major
contribution to the success of the team this past fall but can look forward to
improvement in the years ahead as one of the league’s premier distance runners.
You can see
in Ben and Haley that this sport offers the opportunity for not only racing
achievements but self-discovery. A
sprinter and a soccer player have each become in just one season, both
accomplished runners and outstanding athletes, something they may not have
envisioned when their journey began.
There are though, many pleasant surprises that took place during our
2023 season and to present awards to two athletes who provided us with a lot of
thrills during this season is our own Coach S (chlicting).
(Coach S presented what we've titled the "Coach S" award to two outstanding athletes, Lauren Smith and Andrew Buckley. The award was created through his wish that a student-athlete who having exceeded expectations, be acknowledged for having done so. Both Lauren and Andrew were vital members of the Cross-Country team. Each was a major contributor to the success of their respective squads. Both Lauren and Andrew scored in every meet in which the team participated this season. There are no more deserving recipients in my opinion.)
We’ve shared
with you through these award presentations, stories of improvement and
accomplishing goals, overcoming adversity, along with commitment, hard work,
athleticism, and academic achievement. Each member of the team can, in some
way, relate to most, if not all of those stories. Cross country is a sport which encompasses
physical challenges, team unity, life lessons and personal growth and the sport
should be recognized as a vehicle to the self-discovery and friendships I spoke
of, more so than simply racing. It is so
much more than that. And that too is a
reason I love this sport.
But what
about the many that never win a race: those that come to practice each day and
run their races with no real expectation of winning but with the anticipation
of simply competing? As you know, most
of you fall into that category. But each
day you return simply for the love of the sport. You applaud your teammates and your opponents
as well. You get beyond the finish line
after quite a few have done so before you arrive. You work hard, and you follow the direction
of your coaches, you never complain, and you maintain a smile as long as
possible during each workout. You have
never been an All-Star or an All-Scholastic, and maybe you’ve never received
any recognition for what you know you’ve accomplished, but you accept that and
take pride in knowing you’ve always done your best. And at every turn along the way you have
exhibited what this sport and any sport is really all about, sportsmanship. Not an easy feat in an atmosphere in which
competition and being the best are its most distinguishing
characteristics. Two student-athletes
who I’ve essentially just described are this year’s recipients of the Patriot
League Sportsmanship Award: from the
Boys team – Adam Vinton, and from the Girls team – Evelyn Williams.
Thank you to all who attended last night's gathering. I apologize for trying to change my presentation "on the fly" in order to get everybody home at a reasonable time and reduce the time you were asked to sit through my babbling.
