The Middlesex Girls' Cross Country team celebrated the end of their regular season on a soggy family weekend with a set of wins over visiting BB&N and traditional rival St. George's. A team record of 24 runners got to the starting line, and our juniors used the occasion to celebrate our 12 seniors in their last trip around our home course.
At the front of the race, teammates sophomore Sadie Millett and senior Annabelle Rogers worked together throughout the race to finish in 1st and 2nd place. The individual win is Sadie's second of this season and her career. Not far behind, seniors Josie Silk and Grace Millett worked together to stay ahead of the BB&N first runner to finish in 3rd and 4th. Senior Mariam Craig was 6th, not far behind, securing the varsity team victories. Sophomores Florence Morlock and Kate McBride crossed the line with the fast-finishing packs from St. George's and BB&N in 10th and 13th.
In the JV scoring, Middlesex was again led by sophomore Mitchell Ladd who won the race-within-a-race, finishing 16th overall, ahead of the 4th runner from rival St. George's. While the weather meant that we were unable to host a separate race for JV girls this weekend which would have made Mitchell's accomplishment more evident to the fans, her consistency at the front of our second seven has been a huge asset in the JV scores all season. Senior Emma Caffrey ran the best race of her cross country career (so far) to finish 3rd in JV scoring/22nd overall, followed closely by junior Jade Xiao in 4th/23rd. The JV scoring five was secured by the seniors Sophia Bueno (6th/26th) and Abigail Riordan (7th/28th), with senior Charlotte Bain (13th/34th) and junior Megan Shi (14th/35th) scoring displacement points. Freshman Lucy Wang ran a PR despite the conditions and course, only to quickly get back out on the course to cheer on and encourage her teammates who had yet to finish. Senior Grace O'Malley finished her first race of the season, and junior Ellie Ragosa and freshman Andrea Flores made exciting returns to racing after a few weeks away from the start line. Despite the challenging conditions, wonder manager senior Linda Qin and race day assistant sophomore Lilli Boeser took care of all the usual details, getting splits and places for all the runners.
Though big championship races (and big goals) remain, the team is proud to end the regular season undefeated for the first time since 2011. The team is very happy to have one more week to train as a team before the ISL Championships on Friday.
