After opening the 2023 cross country campaign with two victories in week one of Super Essex Conference (SEC) dual meets, the LHS Cross Country girls were eager to keep the momentum going. In week two, they competed against Caldwell, Newark Academy (NA) and Bloomfield. 11 girls competed in the varsity competition.
Sophia Paparsenos and Taylor Dannis led the team, and all 11 crossed the line with their best times of the season. Paparsenos (21:57; first) led the Lancers, who had five finishers in the top ten spots in the race. Following Paparsenos were Dannis (22:30; fourth), Lila Maru (22:59; fifth), Sophie Schumacher (24:03; eighth) and Carol Flores (24:40; ninth). Also competing hard in this contest were Emma Xing, Sarah Nidhan, Phoebe Liu, Lexis Chen, Jordan Fersko and Avery Lerman.
When the results were posted, the Lancers had picked up three wins; 19-38 vs. Bloomfield, 21-37 vs. Caldwell and 17-40 vs. NA. This brought the girls to a 5-0 record with two weeks left in the SEC dual meet schedule. In the earlier two-mile race, the Lancers were again led by Darcy Bialick, followed by Kiera D’Souza, Lynn Sun,Yolanda Cheung,Yoonhee Lee, Olivia Huang, Vani Patel, and Sofia Iskold.
In week three, the squad competed against Columbia and Mount Saint Dominic (MSD). With some rotation among the squad’s varsity line up, this week saw nine girls at the start line for the 5K.
Once again, the early pacing for the Lancers was done by Paparsenos (21:27; first) and Dannis (22:18; third), who gave the Lancers a great start over the finish line. MSD put in the next runner and then Schumacher (23:26; fifth) contributed to the LHS effort. MSD put the next three girls in, giving them four ahead of the fourth Lancer runner. The team hung tough and rallied, as Flores (24:07), Nidhan (24:34) and Bialick (24:55) in her first 5K all got in before MSD could get their fifth runner past the finish line. Xing, D’Souza and Chen all finished soon after. This led to a 24-32 victory for LHS and improved the team’s record to 7-0 with one week of competition to go on the dual meet circuit.
Five Lancers had run in the two-mile race at the start of the day. Lerman led the squad in 15:55 for ninth place of the 91 finishers. Cheung (18th), Lee (20th), Iskold and Vignatha Daggala also ran well in the event.
Up next in the final week of SEC dual meet competitions, the squad will face Millburn (7-0) and Montclair (7-0), in a battle of unbeaten teams.
