Boys Cross Country Team Excels at Portage Invitational

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The boys cross country team finished 3rd out of 47 teams at the Portage invitational on Saturday, October 5th.

 

Portage is the largest meet on the schedule for the boys.

“It is the Super Bowl of cross country,” head coach Mr. Eric Swager said.

Over the course of the day, there were nearly three thousand athletes who raced and usually three hundred, per race, which means the racing strategy was a bit different than other meets.

“Everyone goes out way too fast, so in order to compensate for that, we go out faster than usual,” Joseph Norwood (’20) said. “We try to make sure we don’t get trapped behind super slow people, but we make sure we’re still in control at the same time.”

Winning the varsity race was Fremont with 55 points, in second was Otsego with 122 points, and in third was Chelsea with 148 points. 

“Fremont looks really good, but right now I think we should just focus on getting better and not worry too much about them,” Norwood said.

The boys did what they always do in the later half of the season: improve. Over half of the members on the team ran a lifetime best including Norwood , Zander Hartsuff (‘20), Erik Reiber (‘21), Caden Faupel (‘21), and William Fredenburg (20) in the Varsity race, and Zeb Swager (‘23), Bram Hartsuff (‘23), Ethan Kapolka (‘23), Sawyer Northrop (‘20), Tom Kennings (‘20), and Grayson Eckland (‘22) in the JV race.

“I think we still have a lot of improvement if we want to get a good place at states, but it’s finally kind of coming together,” Norwood said.