Middlesex Girls' Cross Country had a fantastic day on the course.  As scheduling luck would have it, the Zebras faced two of the top teams in the league today, in only their second race of the season.  Middlesex rose to the challenge, however, winning all contests in JV and Varsity racing.  In a true team effort, every runner played a part in the successful day, with manager Marie Krou, injured athletes, and coaches contributing to a great day of  racing at Middlesex. 

Middlesex started the day with the JV race, in which our second squad set out on the course against a very large and deep team from BBN as well as a talented team from Thayer.  Freshman Annabelle Rogers was patient through the first kilometer, but took the lead in the woods and never looked back, winning the race by over a minute.  She was followed by sophomore teammates Amelia Stevens in 3rd, Jillian Robertson in 4th, Grace Hu, running her first XC race in a MX uniform, in 5th, and Grace Luettgen in 7th.  Seniors Soleil Kerfoot and Wani Pandey finished in 6th and 7th place for the team and scored impressive displacement points over the top runners from opposing schools. Many runners had big improvements over last week, including freshmen Neha Kommineni and Linda Qin.  Isabella Luong ran a big PR for the second week in a row.  Freshman Charlotte Bain ran her first race for our team. 

Inspired by the gutsy performances of their teammates, the Varsity girls took the line.  We anticipated a close race, and there were many close contests at all points on the course.  Senior captain Maud McCole and junior Gabby Walsh again worked together through much of the course, battling the first runner from Thayer.  Maud was able to make a move on the circle that secured her win, with Gabby finishing 3rd.  Senior captain Charlotte O'Toole finished 5th behind another Thayer runner, putting the team in a strong position with the first three places.  The win was really secured, however, when Charlotte was followed closely by junior Alene Fernandes and sophomore Meena Menon, in 6th and 8th respectively.  Nina Douge passed throughout the last mile to finish in 15th, and Maya Sidhu (25th) and Tess Kelley (29th) ran strong races with great improvements from last week.

The team is looking forward to another week of training before heading to an away race at one of our favorite courses in the league next week at St. Mark's.