The smells of apples and grass fill the air. People are seen running about with homemade baked goods in hand, a steady stream of activity of people, you would think that this is Mack’s Apples. However, this isn’t the Mack’s everyone is familiar with. This is DeMeritt Hill Farm in Lee, NH, and those people are all here for one purpose only, to race.
On September 7 the cross country teams all traveled to participate in the Bobcat Invitational Cross-Country meet to kick off their cross-country season in their first meet of the year. It was a meet full of surprises and a huge victory to start of the season on a high note.
“We are super excited,” said girl’s cross-country coach Amy Sanborn during the mid-point of the meet. “The girls came to play today, and they did what they were supposed to do. The boys just ran fantastic too so it’s quite a way to start.”
In an incredible start to the season boy’s cross-country took first place, with girls coming in fifth.
“[The Bobcat Invitational] is a tough course, but it’s true cross-country,” Sanborn said.”It’s got some good up, it’s got some good down, some dirt road, some woods, it’s a true cross-country course. You can’t be wimpy out here.”
A general consensus that can be achieved about the Bobcat Invitational is that it’s not something that can be done half-heartedly.
“[The Bobcat Invitational] is the hardest,” junior Drewanne Sherman said. “We did really good. Some of us ran our personal best for this course. The hills are a little tricky though, I’ll say that.”
While the Bobcat Invitational is no easy jog, many agree that there is no other meet that they would rather start their season with and it has cemented itself as a yearly tradition for many on the cross-country team.
“I kind of just trusted god and ran and it was good. I feel what inspires me to run is just kind of the way that it makes me feel after,” senior Sayde White said. “[The Bobcat Invitational] it just smells like fall. It wouldn’t be fall without the Bobcat Invitational. I hope you all know I’ll be eating pumpkin whoopie-pies after this.”
This meet was filled with tons of incredible personal achievements, as well on top of the astounding ones that were achieved by the cross-country teams as a whole. One shining example of that is junior Carson Fitzgerald who took first place in the boys varsity race.
“No, I wasn’t expecting [first place] at all. My hope was at least top five, but I’ll take first place over top five,” Fitzgerald said. “I felt pretty good during the race, pretty much until that last hill, but it was at the end so I knew I just had to keep pushing. I knew once I turned the corner that I just had to go and I had someone right on my tail, I had to sprint it out.”
With a time of 16:56.6, Fitzgerald shaved off a minute and 48 seconds from his time last year and set out a really strong start for the school year.
Fitzgerald wasn’t the only person to start off strong on the boys side of cross-country, as the only freshman on Boys Varsity, Patrick Ramsey took eighth place in the boys varsity race with a time of 17:46.0.
“We trained all summer for this,” Ramsey said. “Hardest course of the season and we all got pretty good times, that’s all that matters. The team is going to go really great this year and we’re all really excited. [The course] was hilly, I pushed and caught all of the kids that I could. It was hard, my legs were dead after that. We already had a great start to the season, so D1s are our goal.”
Boys varsity wasn’t the only one making waves. Freshman Stella Dutton took second place in the girl’s junior varsity with a time of 23:18.2.
“I couldn’t believe it,” Dutton said. “It was tiring, but I’m feeling pretty good. I liked the trails.”
Girl’s varsity all came in leaps and bounds, all runners beating their times from the 2023 Bobcat Invitational. The one with the greatest improvement was junior Ella DiBuono whose time went down over four minutes from last year.
Season Catch-Up
- The Bobcat Invitational was a strong start all around for all runners, boys and girls. Varsity, junior varsity, and all involved are anticipating this coming season and are ready for all the meets ahead. In their second meet, the Nashua North Invitational, they continued this strong performance with Boy’s Varsity taking fourth and Girl’s Varsity taking third. In their third meet, the 2024 Manchester Invitational, our cross country teams continued their strong performance in one of their larger meets of the season. In some races, such as the Boys JV “B” Race (5k), they competed against as many as 341 other runners. Next, they take on Pinkerton in their Mack Plaque here at LHS. This Tuesday come down to the track at 4:00 pm and show our incredible cross-country team your support as they continue to run hard and take home prizes.
