Sports

PA Girls’ Cross Country Runs Past Wild Boars

On a slightly shorter course of 2.95 miles, the Andover Girls Cross-Country Team dominated Choate with a score of 39-18 and the JV followed suite with a perfect score of 50-15. The top seven girls all finished in a time frame of two minutes. Leading the Team with her usual grit was Katie Faulkner ’06, who finished in a converted time of 20:28. After Faulkner came Jen Downing ’08 (21:14), Katherine Adams ’05, Debby Kuhn ’05, Kendra Allenby ’05, Katie Morris ’07, and Co-Captain Anne Sharp ’05 , who rounded out the group in 22:48. Kuhn has already demonstrated tremendous improvement since the beginning of the season. With an initial time of 24:26 at Brooks, Kuhn has dropped almost three minutes within the past three weeks. This is her third season on the team, and her converted time of 21:52 at Choate was a personal best by almost thirty seconds. Kuhn remarked on her unexpected performance, “I didn’t think that it would be a great day. I was really surprised with how well I did.” Coach Nancy Lang commented on the team’s performance, “It was their first really difficult week and I was expecting tired girls, but even after such intense training the girls still improved their times. I was amazed by the ‘packs’ of girls I saw and by our depth – we have a ton of girls running under 24 minutes already. I think this meet illustrates our strength and that the cross-training is taking an effect.” The team is now in the middle of its heightened work out plan, which will continue through this weekend’s St. Paul’s race and NMH race in two weeks. The intensity of the workouts will be slightly decreased right before the Exeter race, yet will still aim for the girls to peak at the NEPSAC Interscholastic race on November 13th.