BY: Sean Moylan Sports Writer
Last winter as a freshman, Robbinsville High’s Brian O’Toole surprised a lot of people by developing into one of the best 103-pounder varsity wrestlers in the CVC by the time the state tournament rolled around.
And after his performance in Saturday’s Knight Invitational Cross Country Tournament, it doesn’t appear that O’Toole will need a major period of adjustment to develop into a star in cross country, his newest sport of choice.
“He’s only been training with us for a couple of weeks. But actually he was our fastest guy on the day. He ran an 11:27 (good for a 12th place medal in the sophomore race),” said Robbinsville High boys’ and girls’ varsity cross country head coach Mike Walker of O’Toole. “He’s going to improve each week. He was moving up and passing people. He does have some kind of talent for the sport.”
O’Toole led the Robbinsville sophomore boys to a ninth-place finish as a team. Despite their success on Saturday, Walker is still working very hard with all of his sophomores, including O’Toole, on their individual running techniques. However, as they start to learn the nuances of the sport, they’ll become more and more dangerous.
As a team, however, the Robbinsville freshmen boys had the most success in Saturday’s big season opening event.
“Our freshmen boys won the freshmen division. We had 19 points and we had three guys finish in the Top 10,” added Walker.
With a sixth-place finish, Ryan Bauer was Robbinsville’s top freshman. Robbinsville’s David Holzbauer placed seventh overall while Bill Lovering captured ninth place in the freshmen race. Chris Harrison also medaled for the Raven freshmen. The Robbinsville juniors placed sixth overall out of the 18 teams competing with Dan Orlak (16th place), Tyler Muir (18th place) and Ryan Bottin (19th place) all taking home individual medals.
“We had a nice pack of runners in the junior race. They (Orlak, Muir and Bottin) were all around 11:30,” said Walker. Robbinsville only has one senior cross country runner on the boys’ side (Mike Landolfi), so it didn’t score as a team in that division. However, the Robbinsville senior girls placed fifth as a team. Rachel Balint took 11th place with a 13:32 time while Amber Rylak placed 15th with a 13:56 mark. Team captain Holly Lovering also was a big help with her 23rd place finish.
Robbinsville’s freshmen girls placed fourth overall as a team. Freshman Jaclyn Lazzaro’s 13:06 fifth-place time was the Ravens’ best overall time on the girls’ side. Freshmen Julie Swift (15th place), Lisa Leszcynski (17th place) and Amanda Korbar (19th) also earned medals for the Ravens. Since Robbinsville didn’t have enough sophomores or juniors to score as a team on the girls’ side, Walker gave some of his biggest stars the day off.
“We ran a lot of the newer people and we rested a lot of people (on both sides) to save them for this week. We have some runners with nagging injuries,” said Walker, who used the tourney to get a good look at his younger talent. “We had some solid performances.”
Walker, however, planned on using everyone who was available for this past Tuesday’s batch race versus Notre Dame, West Windsor-
Plainsboro North and Hamilton West.
On the boys’ side, Notre Dame and West Windsor-Plainsboro North are both unbelievable teams. However, the Ravens planned to give it their all. Futhermore, the Robbinsville girls were also expected to give it everything they had against those much larger schools.
Walker is looking forward to Saturday’s Cherokee Challenge where the Ravens will take on some of the best cross country teams in the state. Next Tuesday Robbinsville is scheduled to take on Hightstown and Steinert in a batch race which will be held at Mercer County Park.

