LEADING THE WAY: Princeton High girls’ cross country star Kyleigh Tangen shows her form in a race earlier this season. Last Saturday, senior Tangen placed 17th in the Varsity B girls race at the Shore Coaches Invitational at Holmdel Park. Tangen’s effort helped PHS finish fifth in the team standings in its race.

By Justin Feil

Kyleigh Tangen already has signed up to run the HiTOPS Princeton Half Marathon in November for the second straight year.

If everything goes as planned, though, the Princeton High senior will also have another big race that same weekend. Saturday’s fifth-place finish for the PHS team in the Varsity B girls race at the Shore Coaches Invitational at Holmdel Park shows that they could reach the Meet of Champions, back at Holmdel the day before the half marathon.

“I’m super happy that we came in fifth and I’m sure everybody is,” said Tangen. “Making it to Meet of Champs is huge and significant, and I think we’re in an amazing position with our finish (Saturday).”

Tangen was the Tigers’ second finisher, 17th overall in 20 minutes, 51 seconds over the 5,000-meter course. PHS was paced by freshman frontrunner Grace Hegedus, who ran 20:07 for third, a whisker behind second. Rachel Xin and Frances Jonson were 50th and 51st respectively with just three seconds separating them. Mila Trkov rounded out the PHS scoring in 57th place in 22:49. Tessa Thai ran 22:58 for 62nd and Avery Ellen Bahr ran 24:42. The Tigers were fifth with 165 points, trailing fourth-place Mendham by nine points and comfortably 45 points better than sixth-place Shawnee. Rigdewood placed first with a score of 69.

“For the new runners who haven’t been on this team before, especially the young runners, (Saturday) being their first big meet it was an interesting experience for them and I think they handled it well,” said Tangen. “They’ve come into high school with such good knowledge of racing already and that makes me very excited for what we’re going to do as a team this year because nobody is really inexperienced. We’re all amazing runners and we just have to find a way to run together as an amazing team. I think (Saturday) was the first step in figuring out how to do that.”

Tangen is looking forward to the rest of her final season of scholastic cross country, but there is no end to running for her. Tangen, who also swims for PHS and runs track and field, sees a future in running beyond PHS, and her passion for it has only been fueled by the start of this season.

“I really am having an amazing time running this year,” said Tangen. “The girls and the guys on the team, the whole team, is super friendly and inspirational and I’ve been having such a fun time coming to practice every single day. And this makes me want to run in college. And it makes me even want to run beyond college. This year, I’m signed up for the Princeton Half Marathon. It’s going to be my second year doing it. Beyond college, I want to run more half marathons and even a marathon, maybe make it to Boston.”

She aimed to run last year with 2023 PHS graduate Lucy Kreipke before they split apart to finish on their own. This year Tangen’s goal, especially as she anticipates coming off a Meet of Champions appearance the day before, will be simply just to finish.

“It was honestly super fun,” said Tangen. “I really enjoyed it. I’m excited to be doing it this year.”

A less experienced PHS boys team still finished ninth in its Varsity B boys race at Shore Coaches. Joshua Barzilai led the way in 39th in 17:50. Cole Rose was 54th in 18:13, Evan Raphael placed 60th in 18:18 with Braedyn Capone three seconds and two spots back of him before Felix Yu finished out their scoring in 84th in 18:39. Emilio Gonzalez Toro was 117th and Ziyang Ling was 141st.
“I was really pleased,” said PHS head coach Jim Smirk. “This was our first invitational of the season. We got washed out last week, so it was good to see everyone get out. We had a pretty strong performance across the board. We’re super young on both guys and girls in terms of both class and experience. We’re so young that we had to scout the course at Holmdel (Saturday). We don’t normally do that. We have a continuity of experience that we don’t really have to do that often. That put us in an interesting position.”

Tangen is far and away the most experienced of the PHS girls. She has been contributing in the top five for the team since she was a freshman. The dynamics of the team have changed a bit each year, and this year’s changes are the biggest for her.

“For the past two years, I’ve been in a pack with the two older girls on the team, and now that they’re gone I’m going to be running with some different girls and I’m going to have to be in a different position in the pack,” said Tangen. “I’m going to be leading the pack rather than in the back of it. It was interesting to see how that dynamic played out yesterday and what I have to do to be a better runner this season.”

Tangen focused Saturday on putting more effort into her downhill running and was pleased with her individual result. As happy as she was with her own efforts, she was even more excited about others. In slippery conditions after a week of rain, and against the toughest competition and a course that the Tigers have seen yet, there was a lot of promise shown.

“One thing that I’m very excited about the people who were on the team last year, specifically the ones that were in the back, who are now returning runners and they have that experience now and they’re stepping up,” said Tangen. “There has been a ton of growth from our returning runners especially, which has been really amazing to see. People like Tessa Thai and Frances Jonson have really stepped up this year. I’m so happy to see they’ve been putting in so much good training and they’ve been having excellent races. Even Holmdel, which is a very tough course, they ran faster (Saturday) than ever last season, which is incredible to see.”

Tangen is trying to do her part to help them develop. She has stepped into a captain’s role, where she hopes to follow the path of past leaders.

“Being a senior now and having to lead this team, for one thing I’ve been influenced over my high school career by a bunch of amazing athletes,” said Tangen. “They shaped me as a runner all my years of high school. I hope to be the same kind of captain that they were for me.”

The leadership role comes with added responsibility, and Tangen is embracing her duties. She is following PHS’ past leaders in laying the groundwork for her team to reach its potential.

“Being a leader this year, I’ve had to step into taking my training and my recovery incredibly seriously and setting a good example for everybody about how to take care of their bodies both physically and mentally, especially as it pertains to schoolwork,” said Tangen. “It is making sure you’re getting enough sleep and not stressing too much about school because those things can really affect your running performance. Stepping into this leadership position has made me a better runner because I’ve been having to model taking care of yourself, which helps me take care of myself. It’s making me stronger.”

The Shore Coaches meet gave PHS its first big test of the season and a chance to evaluate how the team is developing as they approach the biggest meets of the year.

“For years, we had a very known group of girls that were running really well together,” said Smirk. “They’ve graduated, so Kyleigh Tangen is our voice of experience there and she’s done an absolutely fantastic job. Then we have a lot of girls that a year ago just started the sport, and in some cases we have freshmen who ran middle school and are getting to know our program. I’m thrilled with what the girls side gave us, and that goes all the way down to JV. We were able to get ourselves a little healthier. We had some athletes coming back from some stuff and we got them a race (Saturday) and we were able to take third place in the JV race.”

The season continues with a busy back-to-back. Divisional championships are slated for October 6 with the Fall Classic at Thompson Park, site of the Central Jersey Group 4 sectionals later in the year as well, to be run Saturday. The season has been shortened which gives the young team a week less to grow than past years, but Smirk was encouraged by what he saw at Shore Coaches and how the young team raced.

“Across the board, they are hungry,” said Smirk. “They are making great decisions. I’m thrilled with the decisions they made (Saturday) once the races went off. But they’re raw and made a lot of mistakes too, and we’re going to have to reflect on that and get better from that. One of the nice things about having a young team is when they’re willing to do work they’re going to see growth throughout the season. So I’m excited.”