PHS XC at best for end

Little Tiger girls advance, South’s Kellner wins CJ IV

By Justin Feil, Assistant Sports Editor
   It all came together on Saturday for the Princeton High School girls’ cross country team.
   The Little Tigers finished third at the Central Jersey Group III meet at Thompson Park, putting together their best race of the year behind a full team effort. Jenna Cody led the Little Tigers in eighth, Alicia Fenley was 10th and Molly Lynch was 12th.
   ”We finally decided to run well together,” said PHS head coach Jim Smirk. “We struggled to get Jenna, Molly and Alicia to put together a good race at the same time. We had a race plan. We knew like last year we were a team on the bubble. We stuck with the plan and did it.”
   PHS advances to the state Group III meet as one of the top five teams at sectionals. They will be joined by West Windsor-Plainsboro North, which finished fourth led by Trish Reilly’s fourth-place finish.
   Katie Kellner won the CJ IV race by 30 seconds to lead the WW-P South team to third. Montgomery High School, with Jillian Prentice’s fourth-place finish, was sixth, just 13 points behind Howell for the fifth and final spot to advance to the state Group IV meet.
   The group qualifiers are hoping to finish in the top three to advance to the Meet of Champions when they race at Holmdel Park. The Little Tigers will try to improve again after making a solid step in the sectionals. They leapfrogged the Knights one week after finishing below them at the county meet.
   ”This gives us a lot of opportunity,” Smirk said. “We’ll make adjustments. Our goal is to run the same kind of race up front. Mina Juhn is finally healthy for us. She’s had a quad strain that just took a long time to get healthy. That helps. Our fifth runner having a little better race will help us too.”
   PHS’ depth was a big factor in helping them to third. Their seventh finisher was better than every other CJ III team’s sixth finisher except one. Andreia Fenley, who along with her older sister Alicia had transferred from Florida this year to add to the Little Tigers’ core, was their sixth finisher and Maggie Sowa was their seventh Saturday. The two filled in for a pair of injured harriers.
   ”I’ve got to give credit to our upperclassmen and captains for that,” Smirk said. “They don’t let anyone get away with less their best day in and day out. That’s a credit to them.”
   The more experienced runners performed well for the Little Tigers. They helped bring along Cody, who was the second freshman finisher overall in her first sectional meet.
   ”That was our race plan,” Smirk said. “Jenna is a really fast starter. Where she’s had difficulty this year is from a mile and a quarter to about the two-mile mark. She’s let some races go, which is part of being a young runner. The race strategy was for Molly to get out and make sure Jenna ran the mile interval in the middle better. We knew Molly would take it on the nose at the end, but she’s a better second-half runner.
   ”They executed that plan. Molly hit the mile mark and was shoulder to shoulder with Jenna. Molly just took her and did a ton of work for her and Jenna saw the opportunity at about the two and a quarter mile mark. She saw the advantage of having a teammate on her shoulder.”
   It also helped Lynch. The senior ran 20 seconds faster than she did at last year’s sectionals and finished three spots higher.
   ”It was the first time this season that I’ve seen our veterans get aggressive,” Smirk said. “It took them a long time to realize they could go out hard and make other teams respond to us. Molly looked like the runner she was from two years ago. She ran well.”
   Now the Little Tigers hope to put together another week of improvement to see how high they can finish at the Group III state meet.
   ”We have a real good comparison looking at the other third-place teams,” Smirk said. “And we’ll be gunning for a couple of the second-place teams. If we get our fifth runner higher and sixth and seventh up to displace some people, that will help us. We came out of the last two weeks and had a lot of questions about our new identity and how we can handle a tough situation. It took us a while to run like this, but they did it.”