FINAL RUN: Princeton Day School girls’ cross country runner Emily McCann shows her form in a race last fall. Last Saturday, senior star and Northeastern commit McCann placed sixth in the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association (NJSIAA) Non-Public A girls’ meet at Holmdel Park to earn a spot in the upcoming NJSIAA Meet of Champions. (Photo by Frank Wojciechowski)

By Justin Feil

Emily McCann will compete in the Meet of Champions (MOC) girls’ cross country race for the third straight year this Saturday at Holmdel Park.

The Princeton Day School senior qualified the last two years as a wild card entrant out of the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association (NJSIAA) Non-Public Group A division, meaning she had to wait a day after the group races to find out she was officially in. This year, McCann made things official on race day by finishing sixth in New Non-Public A girls’ meet to earn one of the 10 automatic entries to the MOC.

“I knew even if I didn’t get top 10, every second counted,” said McCann. “My time counted more than anything. But crossing the finish line knowing I was in sixth place was definitely more of a relief than waiting till the next day and doing all the calculations to find out.”

Only the top team in each group plus the top 10 individuals automatically qualify for the MOC. Beyond that, the MOC takes the next eight fastest teams as wild cards plus the top 30 individuals from across all groups that were not already automatically qualified.

McCann ran a personal Holmdel best of 19 minutes, 20 seconds to medal in the group meet. She was second in the Prep B girls championship at Blair Academy the week before in a personal best for that course of 19:05. The MOC will be her final cross country race in New Jersey before she competes in the Nike Regionals in New York the following week.

“It’s really special,” said McCann. “I never thought I’d be in this situation, this place. I think I can do something really special this time. Last year I was coming off an illness so I couldn’t perform my best. I really think I can do something special this year. If I can run the same time or faster than I did yesterday, I think big things can happen next week.”

McCann has company this year at the MOC with three other runners from PDS, as well as the full Princeton High girls’ team and two qualifiers from the PHS boys team, Max Dunlap and Joshua Barzilai. Harleen Sandu gives PDS two girls in the MOC. The Panther senior’s 20:03 clocking at the group meet placed her 15th in non-public A and snared the 10th of 30 wild card spots. It’s Sandu’s first trip to the MOC.

“I think it just shows the growth of our program,” said McCann. “Harleen works extremely hard. The fact that she gets to go there, I’m just so excited. The Meet of Champs is a special place. It’s a chance you don’t experience any other times. There’s only two races the whole day. One boys, one girls. Every person is there to watch you. The noise, the amount of people there, it’s something you don’t experience normally. I’m excited for her to experience that. She ran a PR (Saturday) on Holmdel. I think she can break 20:00 and that’s her goal. I think she can do it. I’m really excited for her.”

The PDS boys had their top two runners qualify automatically as top-10 finishers in Non-Public B meet on Saturday. Sophomore Grayson McLaughlin ran 18:12 for sixth place while Edward Letko ran 18:22 to earn the 10th and final automatic spot for MOC.

“That was awesome to have a freshman and sophomore be our two qualifiers for Meet of Champs,” said PDS head coach Mike Mazzei. “It shows the potential of our program and where it’s going to go on the guys side.”

The Princeton High girls received the seventh of eight wild cards on the girls side. The Tigers were fifth in the ultra-competitive Group 4 meet with 154 points which was won by Freehold Township (111 points). Five of the wild card teams at the MOPC came out of Group 4. Grace Hegedus was 11th in 19:41, Kyleigh Tangen was 13th in 19:42, Kajol Karra placed 39th in 20:30, Eowyn Deess took 45th in 20:41, and Florica Eleches-Lipsitz finished out the scoring in 71st in 21:24. Rachel Xin and Frances Jonson also competed for PHS.

“That team was all about growth,” said PHS coach Jim Smirk. “We knew we had some valuable pieces in place. We just had to decide what our identity would be. It was absolutely a qualification by committee. We’ve rotated our varsity through something like 18 different athletes throughout the season. The fact that we put the seven together that gave us the opportunity and then for them to execute as well as they did, we’re really excited for them. I don’t think we’re really done yet. I think we have room to grow still next week. We’re looking forward to putting together a high quality effort and seeing how fast we can be.”

The pair of PHS boys had to do some calculations before they realized that they had qualified. The Tigers were 11th as a team with 293 points, but Dunlap was 34th in 16:51 and Barzilai was 38th in 16:54 to earn two of the final MOC wild card spots. Westfield won the team title with a score of 54.

“It feels good,” said Barzilai. “I think obviously we would rather have made it as a team, but I feel like making it individually all the work I’ve done since I started, since the summer, it feels like it’s really paying off at this point. It can be hard when you’re pushing through a tough workout to keep your eye on the prize. For it to all pay off, all the pain and struggle in training, to pay off in such a big way, it makes it feel a lot better to know I’ve worked hard for it.”

Dunlap has gone to the MOC before with the PHS team. This year, he came back from an early injury to return individually. Barzilai is in his first season of cross country. The senior had previously played soccer in the fall, but made the move over and was first or second for the rebuilt Tigers all season. Now he’s among the newcomers to the MOC along with most of the PHS girls team.

“The biggest challenge for our young runners is the length of the season,” said Smirk. “This is by far the longest they’ve ever competed from start to finish of a season, so there are some challenges there but we’ve been working hard to put them in the best position for success. I think the biggest challenge for them is going to be the density of competition. Every week there’s been more and more people running fast around their times, but now you get to Meet of Champions and everyone will be packed in there. It’ll be a little different experience for them, and one that we’re excited for them to have. We talked a lot about it and what our goals were this season and getting here. It’s time to go and execute to the best of our ability.”

Barzilai came off a strong season of spring track and trained through the summer, much of it with former PHS standout Andrew Kenny, who runs for Northeastern University. Barzilai tried to soak in as much info as he could, and he has performed unlike a rookie.

“I had high hopes but I wasn’t really sure I was going to reach them,” said Barzilai. “As the season progressed, especially after our first race of the season went pretty well, I kind of realized that this team could be something special and I could go far this season. Every race was a step towards it and a step closer to realizing that this could be a successful season.”

Barzilai ran nearly a minute faster at Holmdel on Saturday than he had there at the Shore Coaches Invitational five weeks earlier. That drop shocked him, but it also fit a pattern that had seen steady improvement through the season and one that he hopes will continue for another week.

“This season, every time we’ve run a course we’ve already run before, you at least get more comfortable with the course,” said Barzilai. “I felt coming into it, before I raced I kind of expected it to be better because the first time running it I didn’t know everything that comes with the course, all the hills. Having run it once, getting more comfortable with it, I was expecting that it would be a better time. Coming out of the race at the end it was still a shock that it was a whole minute faster.”

McCann is looking for a best time as well and a chance to earn a spot on the podium as a top 20 finisher. After merging all group results from Saturday, she was 17th overall. She feels confident that she can continue to climb thanks to a modified racing schedule that puts more emphasis on the end of the season.

“I was racing significantly less,” said McCann. “This was only my fourth race yesterday. That combination of racing less and more mileage over the summer has really made my races that I have done a lot better than the past. I’m still feeling good and I’m going to run in Nike Regionals and I think I can do well there. My season this year has made it so it can extend longer.”

McCann missed the Mercer County Championships due to illness, but has returned with strong efforts in each successive race since then. Her second-place finish at the Prep championships was the first of what will be four straight big meets.

“It was an extremely hot day,” said McCann of the Prep meet. “It was pretty hard. It wasn’t exactly where I wanted to be from an individual standpoint, but it was my fastest time on that course by like 30 seconds. As a team, we got second place. Last year, coming off our (team) victory, we knew it was going to be hard to repeat. Our team worked really hard. At the end of the day, our coach is like we either go out there and win and have success or we go out there and put all that we have out there and go away knowing we couldn’t do anything more and we gave it our all. And that’s what we did. The team just started coming together there.”

McCann is one of three seniors at the front for PDS along with Sandu and Jesse Hollander. Behind them are four freshmen that are the future for the Panthers. Having a leader like McCann has helped show them the ropes.

“I think it’s been an honor for them to run with a superstar runner like Emily,” said Mazzei.

“I think she’s taught them a lot. I think she sets the tone for how the program should be run and how you should train in a very good competitive program and how you become great in this sport. I think she definitely left a good mark on the team and a lot of the runners will learn from her and a take a lot of things that she did and do them so they can be successful too.”

McCann showed the sort of dedication that it takes to be a top runner. She is also a talented hockey player, but gave up playing club last year and juggled doing both hockey and winter track last year, something that she intends to do for one final season this winter.

“Every season, every amount of mileage that I do builds on it,” said McCann. “The consistent running that I did through the winter really helped me and is helping me this season.”

McCann will finish out her scholastic career on the track before she competes in cross country and track at Northeastern next year. She is looking forward to the next level of running.

“I’m really excited,” said McCann. “It’s going to be a challenge and an adjustment. Right now I’m at the top of the pack of my school. I’m going to go back down. Honestly I’ve never had the real experience of being pushed by teammates and really higher competition. I’m excited to see where that takes me both at the team level and personally where I can get with that.”

McCann also feels good about how the seniors will be leaving the Panthers. She is hoping their example helps the freshmen build on strong starts to their careers.

“I think the way we were leading them this year, they are more committed than anyone I’ve seen through our program,” said McCann. “They seem like they’re really into it. I couldn’t be more trusting of who we are leaving the team in the hands of. A lot of them haven’t really run or trained competitively before and going out and running 22 or 23 minutes your first time running a 5k is really impressive. Their talent and their hard work will bring them places. Although looking at losing your top three is not ideal, our team is very young and in the next few years they can get back to the level we’re at currently.”

The Panther girls showed big improvements from a year ago. The newcomers combined with the returning runners to help PDS make a significant jump in their competitiveness.

“On the girls side, it’s been great,” said Mazzei. “We looked at the results. After the merged group championship meet last year the girls were 77 out of 117 teams. This year after the merge of all the girls teams were 33 out of 117 teams. It’s exciting to see, especially as a small school with only 400 kids in it to be up there battling these big public and private schools. To be up there competing has been awesome.”

The PDS boys feel the same about their chance to develop. The Panthers are younger overall than the girls team, and yet they were highly competitive. At the Prep B championship, McLaughlin placed third and Letko was seventh just ahead of teammate Arun Patel the week before the group meet. The PDS boys came in second, just one point behind Newark Academy for the top spot in the Prep B championship at Blair.

“I think on both sides, guys and girls, we can say we were a better team this year,” said Mazzei. “We missed out winning preps on the guys side by one point for our first guys title since 2010. But honestly they put up a good battle against Newark Academy and to be within one point of a team that has won consecutive years, it was a great battle and that is the best performance we’ve had on the guys side of the program in a long time. That was exciting to see, and also to be that competitive having a freshmen and sophomore leading the program knowing the future is very bright for this program and it’s going in the right direction.”

Also at the Prep championships, Jacob Newman placed 10th in 18:29 to lead the Hun School boys to fifth in the Prep A race. Jade Boucree was the top finisher for the Hun girls who placed sixth in the Prep A girls division.