Both the Barrington High School boys and girls cross country teams qualified for the New England Cross Country Championships in November, with the boys placing sixth and the girls placing fourth in Rhode Island.
There, at Ponagansett High School, the boys team finished 15th, with junior Brandon Piedade’s time of 17:01 leading the way for the Eagles followed by junior Elliot Lefort (17:23) and senior Christopher Clyne (17:38).
In the girls championship race, BHS finished 20th and were led by sophomore Caroline Reznik at 21:09, senior Kyle Keough (21:45) and sophomore Sara Chang (21:46).
“The greatest strength of the girls cross country team this year was that every successful meet was the result of a true team effort,” said Reznik.
“I believe we were the only team in Rhode Island whose top seven varsity runners had times within a minute of each other,” she noted. “We may not have had the fastest individual runners this year, but we had 7 runners who were fast and within the same range which became important for team scoring in the bigger meets.”
Many runners on the boys team improved noticeably over the course of the fall including freshman Neal Bansal, who dropped his 5K time by over four minutes throughout the season.
“I feel pretty good about it,” Bansal said, “aside from a couple of hiccups in the form of a calf injury that screwed up my season for a couple weeks. Thankfully, I was able to bounce back and I'm pretty proud of my placement teamwise, timewise, and overall in states.”
Bansal and I are part of the freshmen group of the boys team which, on average, ran our 5K over a minute faster at the Freshman Championships than at the Injury Fund Invitational at the start of the season, helping to place us fourth in the state.
Junior Brandon Piedade (number 299), shown running in an indoor track meet last year, led the Barrington High School boys cross country team this fall. (Courtesy of the Barrington Times)