On a nearly perfect day for running, both the Varsity and JV squads put together their best performances against Loomis, Hotchkiss, and NMH in a number of years. We knew it would be a race filled with many top runners, and co-captain Ian Staines led us with a 5th place overall finish with a time of 16:17. That was over 90 seconds faster than Ian’s last race. Joe Zarif took 15th with a Personal Record of 17:45. Mason Conto broke 18 minutes with a 17:59 and was an incredible 1:45 faster than a week ago. Nate Dexter finished in 20th with an 18:18, a 36 second improvement in a week. Right behind Nate and rounding out our top 5 was Mark Naguib in 18:20—a 53 second improvement. Qaiden Gordon improved by over a minute with an 18:32, while Yuk Sum Chan finished off the varsity scoring with a 27 second improvement to a 19:21. While these results did not give us any victories, they showed dramatic improvement over a year ago. We lost by only 3 points to Hotchkiss, 26-29. We also closed the gap against Northfield Mount Hermon 19-36. Loomis remains at the top of the Founders League and cruised past us 18-44. On the JV side, Andrii Torchylo led our boys with a 19:31—a minute faster than a week ago. He was supported by a great pack of Jude Celebi 19:45, Will Roberts 19:48, co-captain Stefan Kim 19:51, and Jack Johnson 19:52. These runners averaged a full minute improvement each since last week. Wrapping up the JV scoring were Ben Lam with a 20:53 in his debut and Harry Wang 21:22—over a minute faster than a week ago. These fine efforts produced dramatic results as we beat Hotchkiss 26-29 and NMH 20-35 before falling to Loomis 15-40. Adam Pomerantz 21:25, Ed Liu 21:42 (70 seconds faster), Tiger Peng 22:40 (90 seconds faster), Harris Ramlee 24:05, and Bob Wang 26:29 (an astounding 4 minutes and 50 seconds faster) all turned in great performances to complete the day.