Tuesday, September 10, 2013

First day of school...and 14 days until our first race!

Here's a first look at the full Cross Country team. These are the 37 who were ready to run yesterday; there are another eight or so not pictured. We have fast runners at every grade level and a good number who are trying out the sport for the first time. We have only four girls but are working to increase that number.
We started the afternoon with a team meeting to deal with paperwork and greet the newest runners, and then headed to the track at Riverbank State Park for an abbreviated track workout.  Joining us was our new Assistant Coach Bertrand Oubida. Bertrand is volunteering his time while he finishes his last year at CCNY.  He's a member of their Soccer and Track & Field teams and will be helping us with speed work.
One important decision, agreed upon by the team, was to participate in the giant Manhattan College Invitational race on Columbus Day weekend in October.  This annual race has over 9000 runners from 300 teams competing in 40 different races. We last went two years ago and had a fantastic time.

Saturday, August 31, 2013

Two solid weeks

We just finished our second week of summer training with fully half the team in regular attendance.  We've welcomed seven new freshman and may have as many as ten more on the way. The new sophomores are doing well also, as are our returning veterans. In our time trials, Matt Brown has been leading the pack with a 6:01 pace in a 1.6 mile distance, and Kleant Daci with a 0:49 in the 330m final sprint at Van Cortlandt Park. 

Our practices now move to school, at 4pm, for the remainder of the season.  

A reminder: parents are invited to our upcoming Parent Meeting & Trail walk.  Details are on the Parents Info page. 

Lastly, here are some photos from our week-ending frisbee game. 


Monday, August 19, 2013

Off and running!

We had an excellent First Practice. There were 21 returning Dragons and five new freshman for a total of 26. The full team is about 50 this year. 
The freshman were Damar, Roberto, Jason, Chaeyoung, Allan, and Samantha and I'd like to welcome them and applaud their early start to the season. 

To assess the fitness of the team we did a 1.5 mile time trial on the freshman course. Matt Brown came way in front at 10:00. The rest of the top ten were, in order, Michael A, Julian, Lucian, Toby, Sam H, Sam B, Fernando, Brandon, and Boris.