UPDATED NEWS: All seven runners (listed below) who represented LHS’s cross country team at Saturday’s Meet of Champions qualified to compete in New England’s Cross Country Championship on Nov. 9. Londonderry’s team finished 6th in the state overall.
Ryan Young, 11
Matthew Griffin, 11
Sean Clegg, 9
Dylan Hotter, 12
Kerry Daley, 12
Christopher Burpeau, 12
Will Plante, 10
The following article was originally published on 11-2-19
Boys’ cross country team trains hard for championship meets
Senior Kerry Daley competes in his final home meet alongside his teammate. Daley has had an outstanding year coming in as a top runner for most of his meets.
As the starting gun fires, the boys cross country team will start the run of their lives at the NHIAA Invitational Meet of Champions at Nashua South High School on Nov. 2.
“We feel good going into our next meet,” junior Matt Griffin said. “We’ve raced really well on this course in the past giving us a good chance to make New Englands this year.”
According to the NHIAA handbook, “For both boys and girls, the first twenty-five (25) individuals and the first six (6) teams in the Meet of Champions will qualify to run in the New England Championships. Team qualifiers will be determined by adding the finishing positions of the first five (5) runners of each team.”
“Our team did alright even though we lost one of our biggest assets,” Griffin said. “I’m still happy with how the team did and hope that we can improve moving forward.”
The D1 Invitational Championship was last Saturday at Derryfield in Manchester and the boys came in 5th. They had to be in the top 7 to advance on to the Meet of Champions this weekend.
“[Derryfield was] one of the most difficult courses that we run every year,” senior Dylan Hotter said. “I’ve learned to tough it out on certain parts and use tactics in order to place high in this invite.”
The boys’ varsity cross country team placed 16th out of the 20 teams at the Manhattan Invitational, but now they’re focused on placing within the top three for their second-to-last meet of the year.
These final few meets are the boys playoffs and in order to advance to the final meet at the New England Championship, they need to focus and perform at their highest levels.
“We have trained a lot harder this off season and are ready for the challenges in front of us,” Hotter said, with Daley nodding in agreement.
The boys cross country team hopes to have a successful rest of their season as well as coming out on top in states and bring home a trophy for the school. The seniors on the team don’t want their season to end after only one playoff meet and are focused on their end goal of New England’s.
“We’re going to win the whole damn thing,” Daley said.
