The Cougars are eyeing a return to the NJSIAA Group IV finals for the first time since 2013.
By JOHN HAPP
Special to the Sun
This should be a fun and very competitive season for the Cherry Hill East girls’ cross country team as they field one of the deepest teams in recent memory. They have the potential to field six all-conference athletes in the varsity starting seven if everyone can stay healthy.
This year’s team is led by a group of senior captains including Abigail Roncace, Rachel Allen, Carrie Baeckstrom, Taegan Field and Alexa Happ. Taegan Field is a three-time all-Olympic Conference second team cross country runner. Joining her last season were sophomore Dani Lazarus and Happ. Greer Field was First Team all-conference as a sophomore. Baeckstrom, a three-year varsity runner who missed the end of last year due to injury, was all-conference second team as a sophomore. In spring track, Taegan Field was first team all-conference in the 3200m and Lazarus was first team all-conference in the 1600m. Joining them on the spring track all-conference team was sophomore Sarah Pierce who made second team in the 1600m. Also competing for time with the varsity team will be junior Jill Westman, who last year just missed making the all-conference team, and sophomore Erin Krassan, who continued to improve throughout her freshman year and ran in the South Jersey Sectionals for the Cougars.
The primary goal for this year’s team is to return to the State Group IV finals for only the second time in the last eight years. They last competed in the state finals in 2013 when the team was led by two future Division I runners in senior Maddie Berman, who now runs for Delaware, and then junior Monica Lee, who now runs for Rutgers. To make the state finals a team has to finish in the top five of the very competitive South Jersey Sectionals, which includes Southern Regional High School, who has qualified for the state finals for the last eleven years and Shawnee High School, an Olympic Conference rival that has qualified for the last five consecutive years.
The team is led by head coach Anthony Maniscalco, now in his ninth year as Cherry Hill East’s girls cross country coach, and assistant coach Christine Mason, herself a marathon runner.
In cross country meets, a team can field up to seven varsity runners with the top five finishers on each team used to calculate the team’s overall performance. The race distance for varsity meets is 5000 meters which is approximately 3.1 miles.
Besides the tough Olympic Conference Batch meets, the season features the Adidas Shore Coaches XC Invitational on Oct. 1 at Holmdel Park, which is the same iconic tough course used for the state group finals. The season cumulates in November with the Olympic Conference Championship and then the South Jersey Sectionals on Saturday Nov. 5 when the team will try to return to the NJSIAA Group IV finals for the first time in three years.
