On a cool November Saturday at Delsea High School in Franklin Township, the Cherry Hill East boys’ cross country team, currently ranked third in New Jersey, achieved one of its three team goals set before the season began by completing the defense of its South Jersey Group IV sectional crown. When you are the defending South Jersey Group IV champions it is hard to have a better sectional but taking a look at the team numbers helps put this year’s accomplishment in perspective.
The team beat 17 other schools to win the South Jersey Group IV sectional. The top five order of finish was almost identical to last year with Kingsway again finishing second, Cherokee third and Southern fifth. The only change in the order at the top had Eastern finishing fourth this year while in 2013 it was Toms River North. This is the second consecutive year that East has won the South Jersey title and they are the first school in the last eleven years to repeat as champions since Toms River North won back-to-back championships in 2001 and 2002.
East placed four runners in the top 10 finishers led by junior Aaron Groff (second), seniors Dan Helfand (fifth) and Christian Mele (seventh) and sophomore Josh Dillon (10th.) The only other school that placed four runners that high was Toms River North in 2004 when they placed four in the top eleven. Five schools, including East last year, have placed three runners in the top ten since 2004.
This was East’s sixth South Jersey Group IV sectional championship and the second time that they have repeated as champions. East’s five previous championships were won in 1970, 1972, 1984, 1985 and of course last year.
By finishing in the top five, the team, along with Southern High School, has qualified for the State finals for the seventh consecutive year. That is the longest active streak among Group IV high schools and the longest consecutive year streak since Cherokee qualified eight years in a row from 2004–2011.
In cross country meets, a team can field up to seven varsity runners with the top five finishers on each team awarded placement points used to calculate the team’s overall performance. East’s score this year was 41, which is the lowest winning total in the last 20 years since Highland won the 1994 South Jersey Group 4 Sectional with a score of 39. The only other better score in the last 40 years was the 33 posted by Brick Township in 1978.
The team’s average time for its first five finishers was a blistering 16:04, which is 18 seconds faster than their winning average last year and also tops the 16:20.4 average that Toms River North posted in 2004 which had been the fastest average in the last 11 years.
The team needed to put up such fast times because Kingsway was a serious rival as the school’s Noah Culbreath won the group individual title. In addition, Kingsway’s average time of their top five runners was 16:17, a 21 second improvement from 2013, which would have been fast enough to win the sectional title for each of the previous eleven years. Kingsway just had the unfortunate luck to be in the same group as the extremely talented East team.
Individually the runners all posted incredible times. In the previous eleven years no East runner had posted a time of 16 minutes or better but this year the top three runners all beat this mark led by Groff (15:42.69), Helfand (15:59.27) and Mele (16:00.00.) Dillon’s 16:09 was almost a minute improvement over his time in last year’s sectional and is also the second fastest South Jersey sectional by an East sophmore, behind only Groff’s 16:07 run last year. Also pointing for East was junior Isaiah Jean-Baptiste who finished 17th in a time of 16:28.91. Also running for East and finishing in the top 30 out of the 126 runners were junior Cole Parsons (23rd), who took almost 23 seconds off his time from last year, and senior Jeff Braun (29th).
With one goal down the team now prepares for the Group IV State finals, and hopefully with a top three finish in states a place in the Meet of Champions. Their remaining two team goals for the year are to exceed their finishes last year when they placed third in the State Finals and ninth in the Meet of Champions.
