Saint James Girls Crack Top 5, Boys Place 7th At Nationals

LOUISVILLE, KY — The Saint James School Cross Country Team, a small parochial school from Basking Ridge locked horns with the biggest and most storied running programs in the country and became the first middle school from New Jersey to ever crack the top 5 at the Middle School National XC Championships.

Over the past several years, Saint James had garnered some local recognition in New Jersey for some of its impressive League, County and State victories, but the team had never run across State lines. Its only exposure to out of State competition had been at the Cherokee and Wild Safari meets against other nearby Mid-Atlantic States that traveled to New Jersey.

The Middle School XC Nationals are held annually in Louisville, Kentucky, at the legendary Tom Sawyer course, and the competition comes from a staggering number of States, including running havens like Colorado, California and Florida.

This meet has a level of competition that is simply not seen anywhere else on the Middle School Level.

The talent at this meet is truly next level. With 1100 athletes registered from 30 different States, this meet sees the fastest times of the season, year in and year out.

Saint James came off a State Championship race where their boys scored a near perfect 19 (low score wins and 15 is a perfect score), while the girls took 4 out of the first 7 places and won impressively despite being short-handed. But to compete in this National race, they would have to run a lot longer (this was a 4000M course and the average distance they ran all year was approx. 2800M) and a lot faster. They would also have to compete with much bigger schools.

An analysis of the top ten schools showed the average enrollment at these middle schools (not including Saint James) was approx. 1000 – Saint James is around 100.

That means on average, the schools lined up against Saint James were 10 times larger. But Saint James has faced these sorts of numbers before, and they don’t even think about it anymore.

Coach Wizeman noted that, "We line up who we have against who they have – we can’t think about our injuries or the size of other schools, because in the end you have to run against the athletes in your race and it doesn’t matter where they are from or what size school they have."

Internally, there was a lot of energy related to the travel, lodging and team gear leading up to the meet, but when it was finally race time, the young athletes from Basking Ridge were ready to perform on the biggest stage in middle school racing.

And at 9:30 a.m., the girls Varsity 4k went off… but there was a little drama due to a unique starting method which started with a whistle, which was then followed by the gun. The instructions on this were unclear at best, and there had to be a second start after half the line went off with the whistle.

But when it did go off, it went off in a torrid pace with nearly 300 athletes scrambling toward the initial turn on the course. This race had a high school feel to it and there was clearly some physicality in the first 250 meters.

Due to the large number of athletes in the race, it was tight pretty much start to finish, but in the end it was an Ohio athlete, Baylynn Berndik who won the race. Emma Pham out of Maryland and Lylah Keller of Colorado rounded out the podium spots.

At Nationals, the top 25 earn medals and are more significantly named All-Americans.

In XC, the athlete that finishes in that first spot outside of the medals is widely considered to have landed in the toughest position – where it is almost cruel to see that last medal being handed out right in front of you. That tough spot went to Claire Johnson of Saint James, who finished 1 second outside of being named an All-American.

"I had to hold back my own emotions on that tough finishing position for Claire," said Coach Wizeman. "She had worked so hard, dating back to our summer training in July. She had such an incredible season and finishing 26 th in the US Nationals is just an amazing accomplishment, but this one just seemed tougher than any ‘first out’ finish I have seen any of our kids go through. That said, I could not be any more proud of her performance. She probably picked off at least five places in the final 200 meters. Just an amazing and gutty performance."

Saint James had two other girls crack the top 100 in the country, with Livy Battista coming in 57 th and Julia Daus taking 94 th. Avery Pfistner and Emiliana Galeone finished in the top half, taking 114 and 144 respectively.

To give some perspective on how talented this field was, that same group of Saint James girls swept the field at the Met-Pat League Championships, were all top seven at the Greater Morris County Meet and except for Galeone (who was sidelined with an injury), all were top seven at States.

Having all 5 in the upper half of the race yielded the Saint James girls a 5th place finish and a top 5 National ranking for all middle schools in the US – and the only Northeast School in the top 10.

The boys were up next, and the pace was insanely fast. The pace was record-setting through the first half of the race but cooled off slightly in the second half of the race, but still amazingly fast.

It was Oliver Scott of Ohio who led from starting line to finishing tape. He was joined on the podium by Emerson Redcay of Virginia and Thomas Kline of Kentucky.

The Saint James boys who swept the podium at States – Kaden Pye, Liam Johnson and Johnny Roberts, ran tight as a group and all cracked the top 100. They were joined on the scoring sheet by CJ Hummel and Filip Sasko who finished neck and neck, just as they did in the State Championships.

The Saint James seven was rounded out by Tommy Malloy and Bentley Heinze. This was enough to have the Saint James boys break into the top ten nationally with a 7th place overall finish.

Saint James ends their season with 6 more Championship titles to go on their banner (Boys and Girls at Met-Pat, Boys and Girls at GMC, Boys and Girls at States) plus non-Championship but still massive wins at Cherokee and Wild Safari. At Cherokee, the boys and girls both won, while at Wild Safari, the girls took the runner up position and the boys took home their first meet title.

Saint James has now won back-to-back County Championships, 5 straight League Championships and 3 straight Catholic School State Championships.

— Submitted by Saint James School