Haddonfield Memorial High School girls cross country senior runner Briana Gess won her third NJSIAA Group II state championship race in four years on Nov. 12, winning the race by 11 seconds with a time of 18:43.
Despite the accomplishment, winning the race individually wasn’t the highest point of Gess’ day.
Gess watched as fellow Haddonfield seniors Lauren Lynch and Alex Gostovich and junior Izzy Miller all crossed the finish line in the top-35 of the 145-runner field. Junior Lily Minor’s 50th-place finish minutes later officially gave Haddonfield girls cross-country its first state championship since 2008.
The Bulldawgs won the NJSIAA Group II team state championship with 108 points, defeating second place Voorhees High School by 17 points.
Gess said winning a team championship means a lot more to her than an individual title.
“It doesn’t even compare,” she said.
Senior Meg Schroeter described the state championship meet as a surreal experience.
“We started crying,” Schroeter said. “We didn’t even mean to start crying. We were just so happy.”
The championship meant a lot to the Haddonfield seniors who had suffered through three consecutive years of disappointing finishes at the state level. From 2013 to 2015, Haddonfield girls cross country entered the state championship meet as a contender to win. Each of those years, they came up short with a second-place finish in 2013 and third-place finishes in 2014 and 2015.
“It was really frustrating because we were in a position to win each year,” Gess said.
“I feel like something just went wrong every year.”
This year, the senior runners had one goal: win a state championship.
“We’ve been trying for so long and we’d been so close,” senior Meg Schroeter said.
This year, the Bulldawgs changed a couple things. In the past couple years, injuries had helped derail Haddonfield’s state championship hopes. A change in the training schedule this year helped keep all of the Bulldawg runners remain healthy.
“We’ve taken off every 10 days,” Schroeter said. “That’s kind of helped with injuries.”
Haddonfield also got a boost the weekend before the state championship meet in the South Jersey Group II sectional race. In the past, the Bulldawgs had won the sectional race by a large margin. This year, Haddonfield just barely won its sectional, edging Point Pleasant Boro High School by just seven points. Having a competitive sectional race provided extra motivation for the Bulldawgs heading into states.
“That helped us get ready for states, because in the past, we’d go in and we don’t have a lot of competition we know we have to beat,” Schroeter said.
In the state championship, a number of Haddonfield runners had some of the best times of their careers. Lynch had her best finish in a state championship, as she crossed the finish line in 18th place with a time of 20:31. After struggling in states the past two seasons, Gostovich also had a solid time of 20:54, finishing in 33rd place.
“I think we were less nervous on the line,” Lynch said. “We were experienced, and some of the other teams weren’t.”
Gostovich said the team mentality was a big part of Haddonfield’s success in the race.
“We definitely feed off of one another,” Gostovich said. “If someone does well in a race, it’s inspiring.”
The senior class was happy to win another title for Haddonfield’s prestigious cross country program. The title is the ninth state championship for Haddonfield girls cross country. Only three other schools in New Jersey have more girls cross country state championships.
“They set such a precedent of winning and accomplishments,” Gess said of past Haddonfield teams. “We were able to set a state championship, which is as high as you can go.”
