No, they weren’t actually killing each other, just the competition. On October 5th, the Harriton cross-country team took on both Radnor and Garnet Valley for one hell of a race. This race, seemingly only just as important as every other, carried a lot more weight for the team—with this meet and a meet at Upper Darby next week, the Harriton men’s team stands in danger of becoming a successful sports team (one with a winning record). While this is new for the team, and admittedly some of them are quite nervous, they do seem rather excited about the prospect of “not being associated with the scrap teams.”

However, this excitement is not altogether new: this past year the team narrowly escaped the jaws of success with a 5-6 record. This year the team has had some prime additions to the team through a solid freshmen squad led by Michael (Wingman) Walshand Sam (Wow) Payne. This group of individuals is completely bonkers, and promises to uphold the sacred cross country tradition of being the nuttiest sports team at Harriton. According to certain groups within this comical assortment of rambunctious runners, “we
might not be able to help but go 6-5; this team is flying towards greatness, and despite our
tendency to be ridiculous, we can’t stand to pass up this little thing called winning.”

That little thing called winning found the team at this ‘duel in the mud,’ where Harriton clinched the win with five runners in the top ten. Max (Wounded Deer) Norris and Peter Downs had an average race, finishing in first and second places respectively. Jack Curtis had a particularly interesting race, as he found himself distancing the majority of the runners and ran almost the entire race solo, earning him the eighth place spot. Next up were Ryan Smith and Cameron Trainer, who, for the last mile, found themselves battling it out with a pack from Radnor. This battle turned brutal coming into the final hill, when Ryan materialized behind Cameron and tapped him on the shoulder, starting a high speed game of tag into the final sprint. And what a sprint that was; they cut off the opposition and barreled down the last straight, with Ryan finishing ‘a nose’ ahead of Cameron for the 9th and 10th places, finishing the male portion of the team with a score of 30 points and the first place.

Overall, the men had a solid race, and a few runners distinguished themselves personally and are worthy of mention: Hugh Downs for tremendous personal achievement; the one they call Wingman for keeping the pressure on the upperclassmen; and Jerry Delaney for the inspiration he bestowed upon his teammates, which made this win possible. One Harriton runner said that the inspiration he got from his teammates allowed him to “stick exactly to the Harriton racing doctrine of going fast in the beginning, fast in the middle, and fast in the end,” which he then compared to other schools’ strategies of purportedly “going a bit fast every so often.” This spirit that this illustrious band of roving renegade runners exudes is really the key to winning, something this team just can’t avoid.