Livingston HS Sports: Girls Cross Country Season Is Up And Running

LIVINGSTON, NJ — The following news release comes courtesy of Livingston High School Cross Country. Find out how to post announcements or events to your local Patch site.

The LHS Girls cross country team recently traveled to Branch Brook Park in Newark for their first Super Essex Conference (SEC) competition of the season. The weather was very co-operative , a pleasant day to get the dual meet season under way. There will be four straight weeks of inter conference meets held at the park . The SEC has 3 distinct divisions with 11 to 13 teams in each. Each week there are 3 races run with 11 to 13 teams in the race. Each division will have 3 to 5 teams in that one race. Each team will be scored against their divisional foes in that race accruing wins and losses in that division. Each is scored by looking at two schools as if in a single race and scoring it individually. This configuration can make the race a bit more difficult as it can make it much harder to identify your divisional foes for that week, while in the heat of the competition with a possible 13 teams in it. LHS will compete in the American Division. The first week of SEC action saw LHS Competing against 3 divisional foes ( Bloomfield, Newark Academy and Millburn), while also scoring against eight other conference teams. For the first 4 weeks, each team can run up to 12 athletes in the varsity race.

After a strong pre-season and nice opener at the Lancer Invitational , the coaches were eager to see how things would unfold. The lancers lined up seven against their American division foes in the varsity contest. A race plan was laid out for the runners and you could feel the nervous energy as the gun went off and the teams embarked on their season’s journeys. The girls did their best to follow the race plan and gain every spot that they could throughout the race. Closer to the finish, the crowd was anticipating the first runner to emerge from the path heading into their final push to the finish line. Captain Sophia Paparsenos came into view with a large lead over the second place runner from Millburn which she would not relinquish. Paparsenos clocked a time of 20:19.5 for the win by almost 1 minute. The coaches didn't have to wait long to see that the girls were strong up front. Coming in 3rd place overall was Sophie Schumacher with a solid clocking of 21:44. Not too far behind was Sarah Nidhan ( 22:23; 5th) The LHS girls were in spots 1, 3 & 5 looking strong . Six of the next 7 spots were athletes from Bloomfield, Newark Academy and Millburn, as the scoring started to tighten up. The remainder of the team worked hard to secure the best finishing spots that they could. In next for the lancers was Kiera D'Souza ( 24:24; 13th) followed closely by Anne Ferrans (24:51; 15th) and Avery Lerman (24:55; 16th) . The girls had done their best and when the scores were tallied, had pulled it off, winning a very close match with Millburn 26-29. Combined with wins against Bloomfield (19-39) and Newark Academy (20-38) the squad opened the 2024 campaign 3-0 in the American Division. In the other cross division match-ups the lancers beat all opponents taking those meets 8-0 giving them an SEC overall record of 11-0 on the day. Though there was some misfortune on the day for the ladies, there were many positives to take away from the competition. The team ran a much faster 5 girl average then their opening meet last year, and saw some promising performances from new and returning runners.

This week also saw many of the remainder of the team get into the racing season with the 2 mile Novice race. Frosh Shubhada Boyer (16:12, 11th) and newcomer Carolina Romero Vasquez (16:15, 12th), led 7 lancers finishing in the top 23 of the 80 finishers. This included Lexis Chen (16:18; 14th), Allison Zhou (17:00; 17th), Yolanda Cheung (17:02; 18th), Kacey Law (17:32; 22nd) and Ava Gelfenshteyn (17:38; 23rd). Also competing for the lancers was Michaela Liu (19:58), Kayla Greenfeld (20:11), Elyana Boutros (20:19), Ioanna Gliati (20:25), Sofia Iskold (21:16), Richelle Lederman (22:36), Emilie Lapointe (23:05)and Samridhi Sharma (23:31). The girls gained racing experience and had a great opening day in the SEC. In a busy week, they will continue their training and will compete at Garrett Mountain in WoodLand Park and then week 2 action in the SEC going up against division foes West Orange, Columbia and Montclair.

Don’t forget to visit the Patch Livingston Facebook page. Send local news tips and correction requests to eric.kiefer@patch.com. Learn more about advertising on Patch here.