From the Backstretch by Reuben Frank

Sophia Day, Maeve Smith and Kerry O’Day, who all placed in the top 10, lead the South Jersey contingent to this weekend’s Nike Northeast Regional Cross Country Championships.

Day, a junior at Mainland, Smith, a junior at Ocean City, and O’Day, a senior at Cherokee, will race at 2:15 p.m. Saturday at Bowdoin Park in Wappingers Falls, N.Y.

Day and O’Day will compete with their full teams. Mainland senior Gillian Lovett, 7th in the state Group 3 meet, will join Day on the starting line.

Senior Claudia Booth, freshman Cecilia Foreman, senior Sophia Goldstein, junior Chloe Malone and junior Ava McDole will also run for Mainland, and senior Alaina Bromley, sophomore Maya Kumar, junior Megan Niglio, senior Olivia Parkinson, senior Madison Van Haren and junior Grace Wojciechowski for Cherokee.

Also entered in the girls race are Williamstown sophomore Sophia Aldridge, who placed 4th in the South Jersey Group 4 sectionals, and Ocean City freshman Lillian Flora.

In the boys race, Cherry Hill East will compete as a full team, with junior Brody Bogos, senior Raine Guidarelli, sophomore Alvin Lin, junior Brandon Lyons, sophomore Colin Moore, sophomore Milo Poerner and freshman Cian Sherlock.

Entered individually are Ocean City senior Matt Hoffman, the Cape-Atlantic Conference champion, and Glassboro junior Ty Blackman, who was 3rd in the state Group 1 meet.

Eight South Jersey runners are headed for Boston this weekend to race in the 45th annual Foot Locker Northeast Regionals.

The meet moves this year from its long-time home at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx to Franklin Park. The boys race is scheduled for 11:15 a.m. and the girls race at noon.

The top 10 finishers in each race qualify for the Foot Locker National Championships Dec. 9 at Balboa Park in San Diego.

Woodbury senior Peyton Shute leads the South Jersey boys contingent. Shute, who will attend Cornell next year, is coming off a 2nd-place finish in the Meet of Champions with a 15:33 at Holmdel County Park. He ran 4:12.13 full mile and 9:11.11 for 3,200 meters last spring.

Cherokee senior Nick Kuenkel, who was 6th in the Meet of Champions, is also entered. Kuenkel will attend Monmouth next year.

Senior Aiden Williams, 2nd in the state Group 1 meet to Glassboro’s Elijah Whitaker, will represent Audubon in Boston.

Highland is sending both senior Aziz Muhammad-Kane and junior Mason Wassell to Foot Locker. Muhammad-Kane was 5th in the state Group 3 meet and Wassell was 19th.

Moorestown’s Peter Simpson is the lone South Jersey sophomore heading to Boston. Simpson ran 16:46 at Holmdel this year and was the No. 2 sophomore in the state Group 3 meet. He was the No. 5 freshman in New Jersey last year at 3,200 meters with a 9:41.81 at sectionals.

The girls race will feature Northern Burlington junior Liliah Gordon and Paul VI senior Shaelan McNally.

Gordon was South Jersey’s top runner at the Meet of Champions in 5th place with an 18:19 at Holmdel. She was 20th as a sophomore last year in Foot Locker, which was then called Champs Northeast Regional.

McNally, 11th in the Meet of Champions, finished 23rd at Champs last fall, just behind Gordon.

The most recent South Jersey boys qualifier for nationals was Mainland Regional’s Kevin Antczak, who placed 4th at regionals in 2019 and 8th at nationals.

The most recent girls qualifier was also from Mainland – Alyssa Aldridge won the 2016 Northeast Regional and went on to place 13th at nationals.

Foot Locker began in 1979 as the Kinney Cross Country Championships and was known as Foot Locker from 1993 through 2019. There was no race in 2020 and when it resumed in 2021, it was called the Eastbay Championships. When Foot Locker shuttered its Eastbay brand, it became known last year as Champs, another Foot Locker brand. It reverted to Foot Locker this year.

The meet was held at Van Cortlandt from 1979 through 2008, it was held in 2009 at Sunken Meadow State Park in Smithtown, Suffolk County, on the northern shore of Long Island, N.Y. It returned to Vanny in 2010 and remained there until this year.

The Northeast Region consists of Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, D.C., and U.S. citizens in overseas military installations.

In what appears to be his first lifetime marathon, former Kingsway runner Ryan Magnus ran 2:49.53 at the Philadelphia Marathon Sunday and qualified for Boston.

The 28-year-old Magnus, who competed collegiately for La Salle, ran well under the three-hour qualifying standard for his age group (18-34) that doesn’t guarantee admittance into Boston but gives runners the opportunity to register. But running more than 10 minutes below 3:00 should give Magnus a very good chance to get into the 2024 Boston Marathon, which is scheduled for Monday, April 15.

Magnus came through 5K in 20:43, 10K in 41:25, 15K in 1:01.37, then 30K in 2:02.31 and 40K in 2:41.24. He ran his 10,000 from 30K to 40K in 38:53, his fastest 10,000.

Magnus placed 21st in the 2012 XC Meet of Champions in 16:15 and ran 9:33.31 for 3,200 meters at Kingsway. At La Salle, he ran 5,000 meters in 15:36.25 in a meet in Lawrenceville.

Haddonfield’s Marielle Hall, a 2016 Olympian at 10,000 meters, placed 9th in the Philadelphia Half Marathon Saturday morning.

Hall, 32, ran 1:14.51.83. She came through 5K in 16:47, 10K in 34:11, 15K in 52:14 and 20K in 1:10.40. Hall’s World Athletics page lists her with a 1:13.35 PR from Houston this past January, but she ran 1:10.19 at the Philly Half in 2022. Could be an net elevation loss disqualifies Philly from the half marathon rankings?

In any case, it was Hall’s first race since June 10, when she ran 33:13 and placed 17th in the Mastercard New York Mini10K.

Hall has track PRs of 4:32.77 in the mile, 15:02.27 for 5,000 meters and 31:05.71 in the 10,000 and road PRs of 15:08 and 32:51.

Kylie Anicic earned All-America honors Saturday with a 12th-place finish in the NCAA Division 2 cross country national championships – her final collegiate cross country race.

Anicic, a Kingsway graduate and Edinboro senior, ran a lifetime-best 20:12.2 over 6,000 meters on the Tom Rutledge Cross Country course in Joplin, Mo.

She was out in 5:19.8 for the first mile and in 29th place and gradually moved up to 22nd coming through 3,000 meters at 10:08.7, 18th at 4,000 meters in 13:30.5 and 15th at the 5K in 16:55.8 and then passed three runners in the final 1,000.

Her time is a 6,000-meter all-course PR. Her previous 6K best was a 20:13.7 in September when she won a race at Lock Haven.

Anicic placed 31st last year in her first NCAA Division 2 national championship race in University Place, Wash. Including indoor and outdoor track and XC, she’s now a six-time All-America.

She’s won the last two NCAA Atlantic Region titles and was named USTFCCCA Atlantic Region Runner of the Year.

Anicic’s 12th-place is the best by an Edinboro woman since at least 2010. Unfortunately, while Edinburg’s web site lists previous All-America performers in program history it does not list their place. And the USTCCCA web site does not list results before 2010. And I looked for a while but couldn’t find them anywhere.

Lindsay Cunningham of Winona (Minn.) State was the overall winner in 19:30.1. Grand Valley State of Allendale, Mich., won the team title with 59 points.

Clearview’s Anas Bensaoud, a freshman at Rowan College South Jersey, earned All-America honors Saturday with a 12th-place finish in the NJCAA National Championship race.

Bensaoud, the National Junior College Athletic Association Region 19 champion ran 27:16.6 over the 8,000-meter course at John Hunt Park in Huntsville, Ala. He was only 22 seconds out of 4th place in a very close group finish.

Bensaoud was a triple All-America last spring at the NJCAA track championships in Utica, N.Y. He was 3rd in the 1,500, 2nd in the 5,000 and anchored the 6th-place 4-by-8. He spent his freshman year at Stony Brook (N.Y.), where he ran one season of indoor track.

Rowan College placed 8th in the country in team scoring in the NJCAA’s Division 3 with 222 points. Harper College of Palatine, Ill., won the team title with 53 points.

Freshman Gavin Casella from Kingsway, sophomore John Schilling from Deptford, freshman Branden Lachowicz from Delsea and sophomore Charlie Hepler from Delsea also scored for RCSJ, and freshman Darius Davis from Kinsway and sophomore Derek Wylie from Gloucester County Tech also ran for the Roadrunners.

West Deptford’s Jacob Cobb and Camden Catholic’s Matthew Denton are headed for the NCAA Division 3 cross country championships this weekend in Central Pennsylvania.

Cobb, a sophomore at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass., and Denton, a senior at Haverford, will race Saturday at the NCAA D-3 Nationals on the 8,000-meter course Big Spring High School in Newville, about 40 miles west of Harrisburg in Cumberland County, Pa.

Both are on teams that won regional championships and received auto bids for nationals. The winners of 10 regions plus 22 at-large teams will compete in Newville. The top 10 individuals in each region who didn’t qualify as part of a team also advanced to next Saturday.

MIT, defending national champs and ranked 3rd nationally, won the East Region in Hopkinton, N.H. Haverford won the Metro Region Championship at DREAM Park in Logan Township.

The Rowan program will be represented by Jacob Riley from North Warren High School in Blairstown, who placed 4th in the Metro Region race at DREAM Park in Logan Township.

Even though Rowan placed 2nd, just six points behind Haverford, the Profs did not receive an at-large team bid.

Stockton will be represented by Eric Ackerman of West Morris Central High in Chester Township, Morris County.

The men’s race is scheduled for 11 a.m. and the women’s race at noon.

Moorestown’s Kate Inglis, a junior at Catholic University in Washington, received an at-large bid to race in the NCAA Division 3 Championships and leads the South Jersey women’s contingent this weekend in Newville, Pa.

Inglis placed 6th in the NCAA South Region Championships Saturday and the top seven finishers in each of 10 regions who aren’t part of qualifying teams move on to nationals.

Inglis ran an all-course lifetime-best 22:06.1 over 6,000 meters at Berry College in Rome, Ga., and was Catholic’s top finisher.

Her previous 6K PR was 22:35.4 at Division 3 Pre-Nationals on the course adjacent to Big Spring High School in Newville, about 40 miles west of Harrisburg, the site of this weekend’s national championship race.

This will be Inglis’s first trip to NCAAs in either track or cross country. She placed 48th and 46th at XC Regionals as a freshman and sophomore before enjoying a breakthrough season this fall. She placed 2nd in the Landmark Conference Championships in Huntingdon, Pa., behind only Elizabethtown senior Kelty Oaster.

Haddonfield graduate Katherine Rice, a junior at The College of New Jersey, and sophomore Savannah Hodgens from Mainland Regional, advanced to nationals as part of TCNJ’s regional championship team. Rice placed 16th Saturday and was TCNJ’s 4th finisher in 22:57.8, a 6,000 PR for any course, and Hodgens was 37th in 23:36.9 – a minute faster than she ran at regionals last year.

Cinnaminson’s Stephanie Renouf, a freshman at Middlebury (Conn.) College, also qualified as part of Middlebury’s team, which received an at-large bid after placing 5th in the Mideast Region at Stanley Park in Westfield, Mass. Renouf ran 22:57.4, just two seconds off her 6K PR of 22:55.5 from the Connecticut College Invitational in Waterford, Conn., last month.

The Stockton women did not receive an at-large bid to nationals despite placing 2nd to The College of New Jersey in the Metro Region. The Ospreys will be represented by junior Jaelyn Barkley of Belvidere High School in Warren County and sophomore Kayla Kass of County Prep in Jersey City in the women’s race.

Williamstown graduate Anna Sasse, a Rowan junior, missed an at-large individual berth by half a second. The top seven runners in each region advance to nationals and Sasse ran 22:12.3 and was half a second out of 7th. But she ran a 6,000-meter all-course PR, finished in the top 10 at both the NJAC meet and NCAA regionals and has another chance at nationals next fall.

We’ll take a look at the South Jersey men’s contingent headed to Nationals later today,

The Haddonfield boys extended their remarkable streak of Meet of Champions top-8 finishes to seven in a row Saturday with their 7th-place finish in the 51st annual MoC at Holmdel.

Including the 2020 race, which was technically an exhibition, Haddonfield has placed 7th or better seven straight years, 10 of the last 11 years and 15 of the last 18 years. Overall, Haddonfield has placed in the top 10 a remarkable 21 times since 1980. Only eight times since 1980 – a span of 44 years – has Haddonfield not raced at the Meet of Champions as a full team.

This is not a parochial school that hand-picks the fastest hotshot middle school runners from a 50-mile radius. This is a small Group 2 school in a community of about 13,000 residents.

Haddonfield was led Saturday by juniors Luke Andresen and Bennett Wright, who placed 45th and 49th in 16:34 and 16:42. Sophomore Ryan Gibson ran 16:49 for 63rd, sophomore Benjamin Andrus ran 16:54 for 71st and senior Liam Dougherty 17:02 for 84th.

Soph Matt Sullivan ran 17:13, giving Haddonfield five underclassmen between 16:34 and 17:13, and junior Reid Gervasi wasn’t far behind at 17:20.

Haddonfield’s 28-second gap from 1 through 5 was smallest in the field of 15 teams. The Bulldogs averaged 16:48 over the hilly, windy 5,000-meter Holmdel County Park course

Haddonfield’s Meet of Champions finishes year-by-year:

2023: 7th
2022: 6th
2021: 3rd
2020: 4th
2019: 3rd
2018: 2nd
2017: 6th
2016: 13th
2015: 4th
2014: 5th
2013: 7th
2012: 13th
2011: —
2010: 2nd
2009: 4th
2008: 4th
2007: 3rd
2006: 3rd
2005: 13th
2004: —
2003: —
2002: 13th
2001: 1st
2000: 10th
1999: —
1998: 11th
1997: 16th
1996: 15th
1995: 10th
1994: —
1993: 18th
1992: —
1991: —
1990: 9th
1989: 5th
1988: 13th
1987: 14th
1986: 8th
1985: 11th
1984: 12th
1983: 19th
1982: 14th
1981: —
1980: 8th
1979: 13th
1978: 12th

Courtney O’Hara, a freshman at Rowan College Gloucester County from Gateway, placed 13th out of nearly 100 runners Saturday at the NJCAA National Championships.

O’Hara earned All-America honors, and the Roadrunners placed 5th in the final team standings with 146 points.

O’Hara ran 20:49.4 over 5,000 meters at John Hunt Park in Huntsville, Ala., earning All-America honors.

What makes her performance so interesting is that there’s barely any record of her running in high school.

O’Hara ran two batch meets for Gateway early in the 2021 season with a PR of 23:36, and she’s listed on MileSplit with two track races, both indoors – a 400 at the Bubble in January of 2019 and an 800 at the Bubble in January 2020.

If there are any additional performances leading up to her breakthrough freshman year at RCGC, I can’t find them.

O’Hara placed 2nd in the Region XIX Championships two weeks ago at Lancaster Central Park in West Lampeter Township, Pa.

Also scoring for RCGC Saturday were sophomore Mackenzie Cochrane of Washington Township [32nd, 22 team points], freshman Alexandra Campo from Woodbury [39th, 28 team points], freshman Madison O’Donnell of Williamstown [48th, 34 team points] and sophomore Susana Serrano of Woodbury [68th, 51 team points]. Sixth runner was Grace Wahl of Washington Township.