Week 1 Recap: Cherokee Challenge, Run the Night, and More
After months of waiting (and summer training), the first week of official XC meets is in the books! Opening weekend is one of the best weeks of the fall. These might just be two-miles races at the very start of a long season, but they give us our first good look at (1) freshmen and other new faces who will make an immediate impact on their varsity squads, and (2) returners who have made big strides since last year. Read on to see who from Mercer County caught our eye at the Cherokee Challenge, Run the Night, and other local races.
Cherokee Challenge
The Cherokee Challenge is the classic season opener for a huge number of New Jersey schools, along with many of the best teams from Pennsylvania and Delaware. Among that group this year were Allentown, Ewing, Hightstown, Hopewell Valley, Hun, Lawrence, Notre Dame, Princeton Day, Lawrenceville, and Trenton. The massive, Nike-sponsored meet features a fun 3200m course with separate races for each graduation class, and it awards medals to the top 30 in each race. Full results here.
Girls
Sydney Young (Hopewell Valley) leads the pack early in the junior race at the Cherokee Challenge 2025. | Joshua Guirguis for NJ.com
Hopewell Valley’s Sydney Young kicked off her season by winning the junior race in 11:31, five seconds ahead of Marlie Klein from Penn Charter. This win was especially meaningful to Young, because she won the Cherokee Challenge her freshman year but had to miss her sophomore race due to injury. In her postrace interview with MileSplit, she talked about her summer training and about having to adjust her racing strategy on the fly after the junior girls went out slower than she expected. Watch that interview here.
Lawrence’s Izzy Meth placed 3rd in the junior race with a time of 11:58, her best on this course. That’s a great opener for the Cardinals’ star, who is still ramping up after taking an extended break over the summer to recover from an injury. Hopewell Valley’s Anna Wilson also earned a top-10 finish with a 12:29 for 7th place.
Just a little further back in the junior race, Lawrenceville’s Rory Laubach ran 12:51 for 16th place in her XC debut, which is especially impressive given that her track specialities have been the 400m/800m. Allentown’s Emma Ruchelman snagged one of the last medals and placed 29th in 13:17, a nice time that even beats her track PR. Hopewell Valley’s Elsie Rey-de-Castro finished just outside the medals in 32nd with a 13:31.
In the sophomore race, the top Mercer County finishers were Lawrenceville’s Gigi Aitken-Davies (18th in 13:29), Hun’s Lulu Catteneo (20th in 13:39), and Hopewell Valley’s Ashley Potter (22nd in 13:42).
Two Mercer County freshmen introduced themselves as major contenders with excellent results in the freshman race. Princeton Day’s Kayla Peckens took 5th place with an impressive time of 12:36, which was 4th-fastest out of all Mercer County girls at the meet. Allentown’s Addison Frascella also had a great start to high school with a 7th-place finish in 12:54 to lead the Redbirds.
Looking at the team scores in the merged results, Hopewell Valley finished 10th out of 61 teams, though that was without key scorer Maddie LaChance. Allentown finished just a little further behind in 14th place.
Boys
John O’Leary (Allentown) runs in the front pack of the boys senior race at the Cherokee Invitational 2025. | RunningWorksPics for MileSplit
Allentown’s John O’Leary kicked off his senior campaign with a great result, taking 8th place in the senior race (and 12th place in the merge) with a time of 10:15. Also picking up medals in the fastest race of the day were Hightstown’s Mason Johnson (20th in 10:35) and Lawrenceville’s Bastian Bocklage (25th in 10:38). And although Princeton Day’s Alexander Chia (36th in 11:01) and Lawrence’s Alden Smith (38th in 11:01) just missed out on medals, they showed massive improvements from around this time last year.
In the junior boys race, Hightstown’s Mateo Abad-Delgado picked up a top-10 finish with a time of 10:34 for 9th place. That’s almost a minute faster than his time here last year. Lawrenceville’s Hejyule Bae-Robinson finished just a few seconds back, in 12th place with a 10:39. Notre Dame’s Timothy Ellingson also showed big improvement to lead the Irish with a 10:46 for 20th place. Sarth Shah added to Allentown’s medal haul with a 10:54 for 26th place.
In the sophomore race, three Mercer County boys cracked the top 15. Lawrenceville’s Julius Jordan led the way with a 10:51 for 11th place in his first XC race. Allentown’s Ryan Heissler similarly impressed by placing 14th with a 10:55 in his first race of any kind. Lawrence’s Harrison Petrick grabbed 15th place in 10:58, cutting nearly a minute off his time from this meet last year.
One of the biggest stories of the day was Allentown debutante Reed Huggins taking 2nd place in the boys freshman race after a great duel with Cherokee’s Hamza Salahuddin. Slahuddin nipped Huggins at the line, but both boys finished over 30 seconds clear of the field. Huggins’s time of 10:26 was the 2nd-fastest time by a Mercer County boy today, behind only his senior teammate O’Leary.
Other Mercer County highlights include Ewing’s Shazad Singh and Landyn Loesch finishing together in 11:35 in the junior race and then their teammate Ibrahim Songu matching their time exactly from the senior race. For the Trenton boys, junior Malik Kiawu ran 12:06 in his first XC invitational, and senior Briyon Ellerbe finished in 12:17 to cut over a minute off his time from last year.
In the merged results, Allentown, who put four boys under 11:00, finished 8th out of 76 teams. Lawrenceville was 14th, though they were without Arunav Sarkar on Saturday.
Run the Night
Run the Night is a new Friday night meet in New Jersey, held on a fast two-mile course at the Manalapan Recreation Center. Many of Central NJ’s top teams showed up for this inaugural edition and – given the fun atmosphere, fast course, and rare opportunity to run XC under the lights – this is bound to remain a popular season opener.
Robbinsville, Stuart Country Day, and WWP North repped Mercer County at Manalapan. Like at the Cherokee Invitational, Run the Night split up racers by graduation class, but MileSplit posted merged results for individuals and teams after the race. Full results here.
Girls
WWP North’s Allison Lee opened her season with a dominant win in the senior class race. Her 11:02 was 18 seconds ahead of runner-up Jessica Abbott from Manalapan.
Behind Lee, one of the most notable results of the evening was WWP North sophomore Juliette Halpin taking 3rd in her race (and 12th overall in the merge) with a 12:38. Halpin, who was the Knights’ #4 girl last XC season but did not run track, appears poised to take a big step forward this fall, which would be huge for WWP North in the team competition. In fact, the Knights – who are currently ranked NJ #15 by MileSplit – got all-around solid results from their varsity girls. Sara Secora (12:53), Evelyn Yang (12:59), and Vivian Ma (13:18) went 6-7-10 in the junior race, while newcomer Anita Bhatia introduced herself as a significant piece of their lineup by taking 2nd place in the freshman race with a 13:09.
In the merged team results, the WWP North girls finished 2nd with 70 points, behind Shore Regional (52 points) but ahead of Metuchen (85 points) and Middletown North (86 points).
Robbinsville had two girls medalists, with Snigda Gonugunta taking 14th in the sophomore race and Sunaya Nayee getting 13th in the freshman race. Stuart County Day teammates Mayah Chennault (14:22) and Claire McLaughlin (14:23) ran together to finish 24th and 25th place in the junior race.
Boys
Paul Wittenberg (WWP North) powers away at the front of the junior race at Run the Night. | @theoutpostrunning on Instagram
The WWP North boys entered the first weekend ranked NJ #20, and they showed why they deserved to be ranked at least that high. They were led by Agrim Jha and Paul Wittenberg, who are now co-owners of the Run the Night course record after winning the sophomore and junior races, respectively, in identical times of 10:04. For Jha, that keeps up his momentum from a stellar freshman year; for Wittenberg, that’s already a big step up from where he was at this point last year. After the races, Jha and Wittenberg talked with MileSplit about how summer training and teamwork has set them up for success this season. Watch that interview here.
The Knights also have to be excited about the freshman debut of Ashvin Avineni, who ran 10:27 for 2nd place in his race, just 2 seconds off the win. He’ll be a major boost to their varsity lineup. Veejhay Roy was their fourth-fastest of the day, taking 6th in the senior race with a 10:39. As usual, the Knights showed incredible depth – they had eleven boys run 11:10 or faster.
Robbinsville’s Nish Seshadri showed some nice progress from last fall by opening his season with a 10:46 for 8th in the boys senior race.
Other Results
As they do every year, the Princeton runners stayed local on opening weekend to run the Helene Cody Cranbury 5K, a road race that raises funds for a nonprofit founded in memory of a former Princeton runner. Though they treated it as just a workout, there were still a couple results worth recognizing. On the girls side, junior Mila Trkov ran 19:12 on the flat road course, which is over a minute faster than her official XC PR. She’ll be looking to earn a spot on Princeton’s incredibly strong varsity team. On the boys side, senior Saboor Qureshi ran 18:01. He’s never done XC before, but if he’s doing it this fall, then he would be a nice boost to Princeton’s depth.
Pennington traveled to Pennsylvania for PTXC 16 at Kutztown University. The girls team placed 13th in the blue division, led by senior Emma Normand in 22:47 for the full 5K. The boys didn’t have a complete team, but their top finisher was senior Andrew Hofacker in 19:09. Full results here.