Cherokee Challenge Boys Recap
Cherokee Challenge Boys Recap
Boys Team Champs & Co-Ed Team Champs
Thank you to all alumni who stopped by our tent at the Cherokee Challenge. We had a great morning selling shirts, stickers, koozies & most importantly, catching up with friends!
Do you know who else had a great morning? The Cherokee teams. Today’s post is coming from Coach Shaklee.
Moving forward, we won’t post every meet recap as they will also be posted on Dennis Smyth’s ccctf.com website, but we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to share the dominant performance by Cherokee at their home meet.
The boys cross country team got the season off to a good start on Saturday at the 28th Annual Cherokee Challenge! In cloudy, humid conditions, similar to last year, the results showed a significant improvement!
The Freshman race got things started for the team and, as expected, Jack Tindall came out on top. Not only did he win the race by a huge margin, but he also broke the old freshman course record by 15 seconds! Jack’s time of 9:54 was the third fastest time of the day and was accomplished in what amounted to an individual time trial, with the 2nd place finisher 49 seconds behind. Our second freshman, Dylan Weiner ran very aggressively over the opening 400 meters and held on to finish in 19th place, with teammate, Evan Amato, showing tremendous improvement with a 20th place finish! Evan finished 60th in the Middle School Race last year and has come a long way since! Both of our new freshmen, Trayce Slumsky and Colin Dickinson, ran very well in their first ever cross country race! Trayce placed 45th and Colin was 59th in the field of 319 runners!
Next up was the sophomore race and Ben Realley used his finishing speed to put away the competition over the closing stages of the race. With 400 Meters to go, there were three athletes still together until Ben began his kick. At the finish, he was ten seconds in front of the 2nd place athlete! His time of 9:58 was the 5th fastest of the day out of all the races! Not far behind Ben, Sean Sooy was running a great race of his own. After finishing 17th in the freshman race last year in 11:20, Sean took 4th this year, running 10:14! Gavin Danielewicz and Jack Finley also showed improvement from last year. Gavin improved his time by over a minute and finished twenty places higher this year, taking 33rd in the field of 356 runners! Jack improved even more, taking almost three minutes off of his freshman time and finishing 136 places better, in 54th!
In the junior race, Logan Bromley ran a patient race, moving up gradually over the race to finish 2nd, six places better than last year with the seventh fastest time of the day! Charlie Wasserott was our only other junior in the meet and he ran well to finish 182nd in the field of 320 juniors!
The senior race was the last to take to the course, at high noon, and the Cherokee team showed it’s depth with five runners in the top thirty in the field of 314! Enzo Corona was the team’s top senior in 5th place with a time of 10:02 (a 32 second improvement!), the 9th fastest of the day! Close behind Enzo, in 9th pace, was Ben Weiner, who knocked almost a half minute off of his time from last year! Liam Tindall and Tate Midora finish in 19th and 20th respectively, with Tate knocking forty seconds off of his time from last year! Anthony DiBattista was next for the team in 30th! In addition to those five, Liam Daimler and Sam Wright also both ran faster than their times from last year!
With so many excellent performances, picking the Athlete of the Meet was not easy. However, the coaches settled on Jack Finley based on his huge improvement from last year to this year! Jack ran consistently all summer, came to all of the summer practices, and has worked very hard since the start of daily practice three weeks ago. His efforts deserve to be recognized! Congratulations Jack!
Cherokee won the boys team championship, which is the score of your top runner in each race, scoring just nine points! They also teamed with the girls to win the combined championship. More importantly, in the merged results, Cherokee won with a low score of 38 points, 108 points ahead of second place North Penn! In the New Jersey School merged results, the win was even bigger as the team scored only 24 points, 158 points better than second place Pingry! That score of 24 means that, in a dual meet - Cherokee versus the rest of the teams in the field, we would have come out on top by nine points! All in all, a very good start to the season! However, it is early and we need to remain focused on the important goals we have for the Championship season! Go Chiefs!
Stats from Milesplit are here.
Fundraising Goals
It is the mission of 4xAlumni to support the current crop of track and field and cross country athletes.
We are focusing on 5 major areas that we feel, with the support of the coaches, are important for this generation of student-athletes:
Offset or completely cover the cost of post-season events not sponsored by the school. This includes National Meets (cross country, indoor and outdoor track) and invitationals (Oregon, etc).
Award scholarships for deserving seniors.
Provide State Champions and School Record holders with gifts.
Support families with athletes who would like to attend a cross country camp but cannot afford it.
Provide funding for athletes needing physiotherapy who cannot afford it.
We currently only have the availability to collect funds via Venmo, but we are actively seeking ways to collect via credit card, Zelle, PayPal, and other forms to accommodate the ecosystem in 2024.
During the months of September, October and November, we will be collecting funds that will directly contribute to funding for cross country post-season meets. Please consider donating to help fund our scholarship money.
Venmo: @ Cherokee4xalumni
About 4xAlumni
We are a non-profit organization with volunteer board members that seek to help provide funds that go directly to the current team. Our mission is:
to provide funding for travel and lodging to championship meets not covered by the school.
to provide scholarships to graduating seniors.
to provide recognition and awards to State Champion winners and new School Record holders.
to provide funding for current athletes who need assistance attending cross country camp.
to provide funding for current athletes who need assistance seeking treatment from injuries related to track/cross country.
Our Board
President: Jeff Storch ‘99
Vice President: Michelle (Bilicki) Wolosky ‘00
Secretary and Treasurer: Caitlin (O’Malley) Bertheaud ‘05
Social Media & Communication: Lisa Burkholder ‘06
Marketing & Fundraising: Marc Pelerin ‘02
Event Coordinator: Tim Haggerty ‘96
Team Liaison: Dave Sitzer ‘00
Voting Members: Joe Halin ‘00 & Sunny Patel ‘96
Venmo: @ Cherokee4xalumni