On Thursday, October 22, the boys’ and girls’ varsity cross country teams competed in districts and achieved resounding successes. The varsity girls’ cross country team, consisting of Caroline Brown’16, Katie Freedy ’16, Maggie Grundy ’16, Grace Searle ’16, Christiana Till ’20 and Abby Walters ’16, won the title of District Runner Up, coming second after Academy of the Holy Names in the 5000m finals; many of the girls also placed individually. Additionally, two of the runners achieved their own victories, with  Till shaving a minute and a half off her time from last week and Brown setting an all time personal record, finishing in a time of 21:09 and coming in second after passing two Academy girls in the last 800m.

     Along with the girls’ strong performance, the varsity boys team, consisting of Nathan Bekesh ’16, Gaby Fraifer ’18, Colby Kudla ’20, Ethan Lipham ’22, Leo Ochoa ’17 and Brian Showalter ’18, also competed in the 5000m and were named District Champions, beating out Tampa Jefferson High School by one point. The boys’ team also  experienced several individual victories.

     Many of the boys placed, most notably Bekesh who  set a personal record by finishing with a time of 22:06. This particular race meant a lot to the boys. As Ochoa, captain of the boys’ team, said,“It’s awesome. Last year, we had a lot of seniors graduate and we were worried that we might not have a boys’ team this year. Our success this year despite the challenges is what really made this district championship truly special.”

     While they may have enjoyed the successful outcome of this district meet, the Berkeley cross country will have to get ready for regionals this Saturday, October, 31. As Lipham noted, “This year, we have pretty solid varsity teams. Hopefully, we do pretty well at regionals.” Go Bucs!