Riff brothers help South to highest finish
By Justin Feil, Assistant Sports Editor
HOLMDEL — Jake and Dan Riff didn’t have to wait long to know it had been a good Meet of Champions.
The West Windsor-Plainsboro South twin sophomores could tell from the reaction of Pirates head coach Kurt Wayton.
”It looked like me and Jake did pretty well,” said Dan, who finished 29th, one spot behind Jake. “I didn’t know where our other guys were, so I was a little unsure. Wayton ran over and hugged us. He’s not normally that happy. I’ve never seen him that happy.”
WW-P South used its best race since the Mercer County Championships win to finish third overall with 124 points, two points ahead of Westfield and three points better than WW-P North. It is the best finish in program history.
”Our whole team did amazing today,” said Jake, who ran 16:17. “Third place, we haven’t come close to that ever. I’m very proud of us.”
Brian Schoepfer was 52nd in his final race at Holmdel, Dan Sheldon was 70th and AJ Chavez came in 71st to round out their top five.
”All week, the start is what we concentrated on,” Wayton said. “They did it today. They ran tough. I’m so proud of them because they’re a blue collar team. They’re just a bunch of regular kids and they’re standing amongst giants now. They’re espousing the values of hard work. It’s wonderful. I’m so proud of them.”
Jake got off to a better start, but Dan caught him in the second mile. The twins worked together the rest of the way to lead the Pirates to their best finish in program history.
”Right at the bottom of ‘The Bowl’ I sprinted to catch up because I said in my mind, I needed to be near my teammate so I could finish strong,” Dan said. “Once I got up there, I passed him. Then he passed me again, so we kind of worked off each other gaining ground.”
It was the first MOC appearance for the Riff boys, whose development has been integral to the Pirates’ emergence this season. Both were at the MOC last year, but only to see teammates Schoepfer and Sam Macaluso, who qualified as individuals. Even with the graduation of Macaluso and an injury that slowed Schoepfer, the Pirates made good on their preseason prediction.
”Basically from the beginning, we were saying, we have a solid team this year,” Jake said. “We want to put in the training and we’re getting to MOC. We just said it flat out.”
Those goals looked to be in a bit of jeopardy when the Pirates didn’t run as well as they’d hoped in the sectional or group state meets, though both results — a win at sectionals and second in Group IV — would have appeased a lot of teams.
”The last couple weeks we didn’t get out,” Dan said. “We didn’t race with a lot of motivation. I think what happened over the last two weeks, we weren’t going up to our potential. We were slacking off. We didn’t have any motivation. We got a little motivated from those last meets. It gave us a little push.”
Added Jake: “I was confident (in improving). The past couple weeks, we’ve been going into meets and we’ve been kind of cocky. This time, we went in and said, we want to get it done, the places will come, we’re just going to run like men.”
Their 16:32 average Saturday marked a 13-second improvement per runner from their group performance.
”I think we’re a little more seasoned at this point a couple more weeks in,” Wayton said. “I don’t care who we race, we just have to get out well, stay tough and slam the door on it. I don’t care who we run against, no one can control what we do. We can only take care of what we can do, and if we do, we’re going to run all right.”
The Pirates will head to the Nike Northeast Regionals in New York on Saturday, where they will try to add the icing to their cake if they can qualify for nationals. Wayton believes that the Pirates can still go faster and get an even more complete team performance.
”If we can run five or six kids at their legitimate best,” he said, “we have a chance of making it out of there, especially if a couple other teams are over the hump already. I feel like we’re peaking at the right time.”
The Riff brothers have each other to help raise their standards. Last year, it was Dan that finished first in most cross country races. But Jake has come on to finish ahead of him this year. More has been asked of them in their second year with the Pirates and they’ve responded as team leaders on race day.
”We’ve been working hard,” Jake said. “The training has been really rough. We’ve been really getting at it and it’s definitely paid off. We’re ending on a good note. We have regionals next week and we’re looking to do well there.”
Two straight weeks of subpar performances could have raised red flags. Instead, the Pirates found the perfect response by answering the challenge of the MOC.
”We just needed some extra motivation, some extra training to get there,” Dan said. “The extra motivation really helped, the extra training added up and it added up to this. It’s been great.”