Sophomore leads Little Tigers back to .500 mark
By: Justin Feil
The biggest surprise on the Princeton High boys’ cross country team is not that Dan Cavallaro is running so well.
It’s that he’s running at all for the Little Tigers.
Cavallaro had a most inauspicious beginning to a cross country career. As a freshman last year, his season was over almost as quickly as it began.
"It was probably two weeks," Cavallaro said. "I didn’t do any base training. It was my first time ever running. After the first meet, I just died.
"I went to a sports doctor but he didn’t have an answer for me. I could barely walk for a month."
Yet Cavallaro’s health slowly improved and he came back in time to see steady improvement as a miler in the winter and spring track seasons. And this fall, he came back determined to have a better cross country campaign.
"It started out last summer. I tried baseball in middle school, and I had tried soccer growing up," said the PHS sophomore. "My parents wanted me to try different things. My mom ran in high school. She actually was a freshman when our coach was a senior. They ran together in high school. I decided to do that and stick with it.
"I came back in the winter. That gave me a lot of confidence."
Cavallaro was the Little Tigers’ top finisher fourth overall as they topped Trenton and Ewing and lost to West Windsor-Plainsboro North at Washington Crossing on Tuesday. Cavallaro set a new personal best for the 5k course of 17 minutes, 40 seconds. In his lone race last year, he finished under 22 minutes.
"He didn’t exactly come out of nowhere," said PHS head coach John Woodside after his team improved to 3-3. "Cross country-wise, he’s proved a lot. He’s taken a huge step upward. In winter track, he was pretty good. In spring track, he got to be a decent runner. And it’s another huge step up this season. He’s stepped up each season. He’s been running better and better, and it’s been very good for the team."
It’s just a start, Woodside hopes, to what Cavallaro can do in the coming weeks and years.
"We have a lot of things we can add to his repertoire," Woodside said. "Right now, it’s more or less basic (training), nothing special. He hasn’t done that much weight training. He hasn’t done that much huge mileage base training. He’s just getting started."
Cavallaro isn’t quite sure himself how much better he can be, how much of his potential has been tapped into and how much faster he can be.
"I really don’t know," he said. "Obviously, I want to keep getting better. I’ll put in the hard work and we’ll see what happens."
For now, he’s content to be helping the young Little Tigers squad build back up to being a county power. With two more wins Tuesday, PHS is moving in the right direction.
"We’re glad that we’re back to a .500 average, but we still have work to do as a team," Cavallaro said. "Our 4, 5, 6 and 7 guys, we’re expecting to have a lot better pack separation. We’re working on bringing the back guys up, and bringing the team closer together."
It’s helped Cavallaro that he does have teammates to push him. Christophe Dorsey has been near him in most of their races. Woodside knew from the summer that Cavallaro had the potential to be at the top for the Little Tigers.
"We got together in the summer," Woodside said, "And he was away on vacation a lot so he wasn’t there a lot. But he would come back and I’d think he’d get blown away and then he’d stay up there. I knew he must be running. He was staying with the guys doing the training and he showed he was serious about it. He and Christophe have been pushing each other.
"He does have four or five teammates who are running pretty close on his heels," he added. "He ran 17:40 (Tuesday) and our fifth guy got in in 18:39. That is starting to be good. It’s starting to come along. Against some of the other teams we ran against before, we would have done a lot better."
It’s all a bit new to Cavallaro, who saw only one race course last year before his injury ended his season. Saturday, he had his first chance to race at Holmdel, site of the sectionals and Group championships. Cavallaro was the top PHS finisher, in 17:59.
"I expect to be up there," Cavallaro said. "I didn’t expect to be beating Christophe by this much. He’s not feeling great, and he hasn’t figured it out. By sectionals and counties, we should be running together."
"They are starting to really push themselves a lot harder," Woodside said. "They’re getting more serious with workouts. You have to learn as you go. They’re learning to race. Each race, we’re getting better and better. Saturday was a real good day for us, and (Tuesday) was somewhat even better. That’s what we’re pushing for, to keep getting better every day."
Cavallaro is also hoping to continue his improvement. He’d like to run under 17 minutes when the Little Tigers race at Mercer County Park on Tuesday. It’s a lot faster than he ever had a chance to show last fall. But he hasn’t experienced any of the pain that cost him his first year and left an uncertain future in cross country.
"Not at all," he said. "I’ve been feeling great so far."
Dan Cavallaro’s race results prove it, and they’re just a tip of the iceberg for the second-year PHS runner.