Focused Lefebvre is solid No. 1
By Justin Feil, Assistant Sports Editor
Erik Lefebvre broke onto the Princeton Day School boys’ cross country team at No. 1.
His position has not changed in his fourth year with the Panthers, but he is undoubtedly in the midst of his best season, and enjoying a great year for the team as well.
”Erik has matured into a totally focused runner,” said PDS head coach Eamon Downey. “Erik was good last year, but I thought Erik didn’t make a huge amount of progress last year. He might have even been in a bit of a rut. This year, he’s broken through that. He’s been remarkably consistent. He’s one of the captains and has provided a good leadership model.”
One that starts at the front of the pack for the Panthers. He led five PDS runners across the line in 17 minutes, 8 seconds in a sweep of Hun last Tuesday. Then Saturday, Lefebvre ran second overall behind Pennington’s Phil Wood in 17:04 as PDS picked up a key win over the Patriot Conference champions as well as rolling past Rutgers Prep for a second time this season to improve to 8-1 in dual meets.
Erik Lefebvre is the Princeton Packet Athlete of the Week.
”The training regimen is a little different,” Lefebvre said. “We’ve been doing more pace work than long distance running. I also did a track program last year in the spring. I think that kept me in shape.
”Basically I set my goals higher up. My best time last year was 17:03. My goal for this year was to break 17, and I did that at the Newark Invitational. My goal is now to consistently break 17.”
Lefebvre got an early indication that he was in good shape for this season. The Newark Invitational was the first major meet of the season, and he wasted no time in reaching his goal.
”I was very surprised with that,” Lefebvre said. “Mentally going into it, I just wanted to go as hard as I could and tried to keep up with the guy in front of me. One of our guys asked me what I thought I ran, and I thought I did about 17:30. He told me I got 16:53. That surprised me a lot. Physically, I felt a lot better when I did it.”
The race set the tone for the rest of his senior season of cross country. Lefebvre and the Panthers finished their dual meet portion on Tuesday with a 21-37 win over Solebury. They are 9-1 now.
”We didn’t lose that many off the varsity last year,” said Lefebvre, who tied the course record that had stood until this season with a 16:48 clocking. “We basically kept the varsity team. We had a couple people that stepped it up and became really good and started varsity this year.”
The team’s only loss this season came against Prep A school Peddie. They have taken care of all other comers.
”I think we have a good team and it makes our second place in the conference race all the more bizarre,” Downey said. “It was like the perfect storm of events. Pennington won that race by seven points. Even Saturday, we had one of our best guys not finish and we still beat Pennington even with that.
”I thought we had a very good team, certainly the best in the conference. That’s been borne out in the races we’ve run in the conference.”
Taking on Pennington on Saturday was big for the Panthers after the conference results. Lefebvre and the team were up for the challenge.
”We knew we could have beaten them at the Patriot but a couple kids had a bad day and that threw us off,” he said. “We were definitely trying to beat them. We were trying to prove to ourselves that we’re the better team and get it out there.”
Beyond this year, Lefebvre, who has dual citizenship in the U.S. and Canada, hopes to continue to run in college. Lefebvre sees potential on the track in the mile. PDS has no track team, so all that is left for the Panthers is the Mercer County Championships next Friday and the Prep B state meet.
”What I would want to do is to get my best time at counties,” Lefebvre said. “That’s where I’ve done my best before. There’s a much wider range of competition so it pushes me.
”States, I’m looking for top in my division and I know (Gill-St. Bernard’s) Doug Smith and Phil Wood will be up there,” he added. “My goal is to be up there with them and keep up with No. 3.”
It would be a big finish for the Panthers’ No. 1 to exit his scholastic cross country career.

