Mercer County girls will be busy at the Meet of Champions after loading up on medals at the group championships.
Nine individual boys and four relay teams punched their tickets to the Meet of Champions with superb performances.
Allison Lee (WWP North) shatters the CVC 1600m record with a 4:40 — #4 all-time in New Jersey — while Agrim Jha (WWP North) earns the boys win in a quick 4:15.
One major takeaway by NJ.com’s Bakari Rice is that the CVC “is shaping up to be very competitive this fall, thanks to strong early-season performances from several top programs.” WWP North averaged 10:23 at Run the Night with a 41-second split. WWP South averaged 10:49 at the Thompson 2 Miler with a 26-second split. Hopewell Valley won the team title at the TCNJ High School XC Invite with a 17:51 average.
Hopewell Valley is one of five Group 3 boys teams that NJ.com’s Bakari Tice considers underrated this season. They’re led by Silas Allevik and his Holmdel PR of 17:00, and they get crucial depth from Finnegan Curley, Colin Vickery, Mason O’Connor, and James Damron.
Two of the five most underrated Group 4 boys teams hail from Mercer County. Princeton has a tight 1:07 five-man split at Holmdel, which includes Finn Wedmid, Braedyn Capone, Evan Raphael, Felix Yu, and Harrison Knoch. They boast a 17:39 team average. WWP South also makes the list, with a 1:16 split and a 18:25 team average at Holmdel. They’re lead by Sean Mania Aron Zola, Harsh Sharma, and Aradhya Vijay.
The WWP South girls 4×100m team — Anastasia Kudin, Adama Turay, Claire Dumortier, and Logan Mills — talk with the Trentonian’s Kyle Franko after their race at the Penn Relays. They talk about their teamwork and and sense of pride in clocking their fastest time after years of running together.
In the Times of Trenton’s boys XC postseason awards, the runner of the year was Shravan Pradeep (WW-P South). Pradeep talked about his dedication to never missing a day and his strategy of going out hard at the Meet of Champions. The team of the year was WW-P North. The coach of the year was Katie Reilly (WW-P South), who credited her team’s success to the runners’ love for the sport and to her fellow coach Stephanie Pegues’s work developing a strong training plan.
The Times’ All-Area team was Felix Farrugia (Princeton), Luke Ferrer (WW-P North), Tyler Hurst (Steinert), Agrim Jha (WW-P North), Tarun Kovoor (Notre Dame), Shravan Pradeep (WW-P South), and Burke Thompson (Hightstown).
Blanchard, Lee, Jha, Kinsler, Crawford, and Gilligan all post some of the fastest times in Mercer County history.