The cross country regular season is in its homestretch for girls and boys teams in the FCIAC and there are many runners and teams having very good seasons as they look to improve toward that goal of hitting peak performances in the upcoming championship meets.
Most teams will have just one more dual meet. The FCIAC Cross Country Championships are always the first postseason action of every high school sports season and this fall’s championships are scheduled for Oct. 19 at the usual venue of Waveny Park in New Canaan.
Greenwich junior Esme Daplyn placed fifth in last year’s conference championship meet and she is among several girls who are having very good seasons thus far.
Daplyn won her season-opening meet with an 18:25.05 on Trumbull’s 2.9-mile course. After she placed fifth at the Wilton Invitational with a 15:08.1 on the Allen’s Meadows 2.5-mile course on Sept. 17, Daplyn won the 5,000-meter race (19:34.72) at Fairfield Warde on Sept. 20, and then the 4,000-meter race (16:37.5) on Sept. 28 at Danbury’s Tarrywile Park.
Trumbull junior Kathryn Marchand and New Canaan freshman Eliana Savelli have also been among the top female runners in the conference as they both finished ahead of Daplyn at the Wilton Invitational and Daplyn finished ahead of Marchand and Savelli in the dual meets.
Marchand and Savelli raced against each other twice within a span of four days and they each finished ahead of each other once by about eight seconds in each instance.
Marchand was runner-up at the Wilton Invitational with a 14:44.4 and Savelli (14:52.5) placed third on the 2.5-mile course. Four days later, Savelli won the 4,000-meter race on her home Waveny Park course with a 15:22.21 and Marchand was second with a 15:30.8.
Savelli was victorious in her high school debut on Sept. 13 with a time of 17:24.4 on Ridgefield’s 4,200-meter course and she won her third dual meet of the season on Sept. 28 with a 15:33.86 on Waveny’s 4K course.
Marchand won a 2.5-mile race by 40 seconds with her clocking of 15:13.7 at Wilton’s Allen Meadows course on Oct. 3, five days after she ran away from the field on her home 2.9-mile course to win that with a 17:42.89.
New Canaan sophomore Radea Raleva won the 3-mile race with an 18:15 just this past Oct. 3 at Greenwich Point and finished ahead of runner-up Daplyn (18:23) and Savelli (19:05).
Darien junior Cam Meyer won the 2.56-mile race (15:45.13) in the Sept. 14 season opener at Darien. She improved her time to 15:27.4 on the same course with a Sept. 28 victory, then she had a 19:06 on Greenwich’s 3-mile course when she placed fourth behind Raleva, Daplyn and Savelli.
There are a few boys who have consistently had strong performances and Staples junior Ben Lorenz has particularly stood out while leading the unbeaten Wreckers to their 12-0 record in the conference season through Oct. 3. Last year Staples finished 15-0.
Lorenz was the winner in all four races involving dual meets with three other teams.
Fairfield Warde junior Parker Broderick and Trumbull junior David Carillo have also been stellar.
Lorenz won the season opener Sept. 13 on Ridgefield’s 4,200-meter course with a time of 14:27 and Broderick was runner-up with a 14:47.9.
Lorenz won the big Sept. 28 meet at Danbury’s host venue of Tarrywile Park with a time of 12:59.9 over the 4,000-meter course to lead the Wreckers to victories over Danbury, Greenwich, and St. Joseph. Devon Rosemark of Danbury placed second with a 13:12.3.
Lorenz won the 3.1-mile race at Wilton with a 16:07.83 on Sept. 20, and most recently he won another 5K (16:13.53) in the Oct. 3 win over three teams at Staples.
After Fairfield Warde’s Broderick placed second behind Lorenz in the Sept. 13 season opener, Broderick won three dual meets within a span of 14 days from Sept. 30-Oct. 3.
Broderick won the 5,000-meter race in 16:46.15 on Sept. 20 on his home course. He won the 4,800-meter race (16:01.4) at Darien on Sept. 28, and then the 5K (3.1 miles) race on Oct. 3 at Allen’s Meadows in Wilton with a clocking of 16:07.32 which was about 4½ seconds faster than runner-up Carillo (16:11.87).
Carillo won the Wilton Invitational on Sept. 17 with a time of 16:03.7 on Sept. 17. He has also won three races in dual meets. Carillo won the season-opening 2.9-mile race on his home course with a 15:21.48. He won the next meet with a 16:26 on New Canaan’s Waveny Park 5,000-meter course, and Carillo won again on his home course with a 15:24.39.
There are four FCIAC girls teams ranked among the top seven and five boys conference teams in the top 10 of the latest soundRUNNER CT High School Coaches’ XC Poll which was released Oct. 5.
The Glastonbury girls team and the Hall boys team maintained the No. 1 rankings they had been in from the preseason poll and the first poll of the regular season.
New Canaan is ranked second behind Glastonbury, Ridgefield is No. 4, while Greenwich and Wilton are ranked sixth and seventh, respectively, in the girls poll.
As for the five FCIAC teams in the boys poll: Staples and Danbury are ranked fourth and fifth, respectively, Ridgefield is No. 7, while Fairfield Warde and Trumbull complete the top 10 at No. 9 and No. 10, respectively.
Results and other information were obtained from the combination of the www.athletic.net and www.mysportsresults.com websites.