Congratulations to Hopkinton’s Maddy Lane, Oyster River’s Haley Kavanagh and Bishop Guertin’s Matthew Giardina as all three qualified as individuals for the 2024 Nike Cross Nationals in Portland Oregon on December 8th. All three were among the top 5 individual finishers who are not a part of one of the 2 auto-qualifying teams at yesterday’s Nike Cross Northeast Regional in Wappingers Falls, NY.
The boys ran first and Giardina certainly got out well. Around midway at the top of the major climb of Bowdoin Park, Giardina was on the edge of a qualifying position. Last year he missed making the trip by 1 place, this year he would not be denied as he had a great close over the final 2k to place 7th overall in 15:58 to punch his ticket (CBA-NJ won as a team and had 2 in front of Giardina).
Lane and Kavanagh followed up as they too positioned themselves around the top 10 at the outset and during the interrupted climb to the halfway mark. Over the latter half, Lane was able to move up 3 spots to finish 5th overall in 18:38 while Kavanagh passed 5 athletes to place right behind her in 6th crossing in 18:40! This marks the first time since 2016 NH is sending 2 individual girls to Nike Cross Nationals when BG’s Caroline Fischer and West’s Julia Robitaille qualified together. Kavanagh also joins a short list of NH athletes to qualify for NXN 2 consecutive years.
OR’s teammate Mackenzie Cook made the All-Northeast team placing 16th in 19:13. She along with the younger sisters Maddy Cook and Olivia Kavanagh led the Bobcats to an admirable 7th place finish.
Congrats to all!
