By Michael Holcombe, Sports Writer
Both the Monroe Township High School boys and girls cross country teams wrapped up their seasons this past Saturday, failing to place any individuals in the top 10 and missing out on advancing as a team as well.
The girls squad, which has been struggling with low numbers and recurring injury all season, failed to score in the meet, placing only four runners.
The boys meanwhile, fared better, finishing 11th and running an average time of 18:51.
The girls started the day without two of their top runners. Damaris Segarra had a foot injury a week ago at the county meet and was already lost for the season, and Valine Bogue showed up for the meet sick enough to be scratched by her coach, Jim Cox.
Even though they were shorthanded and didn’t factor in the team scoring, the meet wasn’t all bad news for Monroe as Cox got a strong performance out of Katie Rusnock, who finished 21st in 20:58. She was followed by Erika Korsak in 24:25, Allison Karas in 26:20 and Britney Scott in 27:39.
”Katie’s been our number one basically for the whole year,” Cox said of his top finisher. “Without injury she would have done much better. But even without the injury it would have been a stretch for her to qualify. But she wanted to run it under 21:00 and she did it.
”The race went out a lot quicker than anyone expected. She realized in the first stretch she wasn’t running with the top 10 kids, backed off and went after her goal, which was to break 21 minutes. The whole way she never really wavered from the top 20. I’m very happy for her. For a first year kid to battle through injury and do that is impressive. She’s only a sophomore and she is only going to get better and stronger.
”I was happy that Erika had one of her better runs of the year, especially coming off a three-week injury. Allison is a senior and I think that was her best run on that course. I was happy with the way they ran. Even Britney, who has a lot of potential and needs to believe how good she can be.”
The meet ended a season that was not as successful as Cox might have hoped back in September and it left him a little wistful over what might have been.
”One or two breaks here or there wouldn’t have changed where we finished in the county or states,” he points out. “Last year we were 9-1 and I said all along that we were not that good a team. We were very young. We were 4-4 this year but we were not that bad. If we had had a healthy Katie and Damaris all year we would have gotten more out of it. Fighting to be .500 is a little different than being 8-1. People get more confident when you’re winning and they tend to run that way.
”The way we lost some meets, losing our fifth person to injury, made it a tough year . Our biggest problem right now is that cross country is the stepchild of Monroe athletics. We can get 80 girls out for spring track but we have trouble getting eight for cross country. When you look at teams that succeed from year to year they have multiple kids coming out every year. You look at Old Bridge. They had a down year this year and they still had 40 kids in their program.
”Our girls field hockey and soccer programs are two of the best athletic programs in the entire county. We are going to have to be successful to pry somebody away from a successful program. It will be interesting to see if we move in a successful direction. We have the kids that want to work they just need help. That’s what we’re looking to do, get the middle school kids to come out. That’s how we have to try and build the program.”
The boys wrapped up their season with a respectable performance, finishing 11th with 297 points, far off the pace of champion West Windsor-Plainsboro North, which won with 28.
While not placing anyone in the top 25, Ryan Brown was able to finish in 32nd place out of 114 competitors with a time of 17:43. He was followed by Nate Smith in 45th with a time of 18:20, Ben Wendel in 19:13, Nick Mazurek in 19:28, Will Pentangelo in 19:31, Frances San Andres in 19:58 and Dan Lemelman in 20:22.
