Andover Boys Cross Country lined up for their second race of the season at the Black Bear Invitational this past Saturday, taking the win over 20 other teams. The team edged out its rival, Phillips Exeter Academy (Exeter), by just two points.
Although the course at Coe-Brown Northwood Academy was new for the entire team, teammates studied and familiarized themselves with the course extensively. Jakob Kuelps ’25 explained how the team had great success at the invitational in great part due to Head Coach Patrick Rielly’s preparation.
“We all placed pretty high [individually], and we had high expectations going in, and we all delivered. This was a new course for us, and we tackled it really well. Coach Rielly really prepared us well. He gave us all the necessary information and set us up for success. We took the preparation and really pushed ourselves mentally and physically in the race,” said Kuelps.
Going into the race, the team focused on staying conservative and relaxed in the first mile, according to Robert Budzinski ’26. The course started mostly flat and downhill, with rolling hills later on in the race.
Budzinski said, “Coach Rielly looked at some old results and race videos to get information on the course. He looked at previous race splits, and we saw that teams who often started out slower and saved their energy were often more successful… A lot of other teams ended up going out too fast, but we stayed patient and moved up a lot in the second and third mile. That helped us to succeed as a team in the race.”
This season, the team has done a lot of workouts on hills to prepare for the terrain at Black Bear. Tam Gavenas ’25 emphasized how the team’s hard work and dedication in hill workouts proved valuable in the race, propelling the team to the win.
Gavenas said, “Our Coach [has] been giving us a lot of workouts on trails with some tough hills. We found ourselves struggling in the first week or so going up big hills, so we did a lot of hill repeats on the trails leading up to the meet on Saturday, and we really practiced going up the hills and getting stronger on them.”
According to Luke Williamson ’25, teamwork was also a big strength for the team this weekend. Teammates ran together and challenged one another throughout the race, with the team’s first and fifth runners placing just 18 places from one another in a race with 168 individuals.
Williamson said, “The team works together really well, and from our number three runner to our number seven runner, we are all pretty similar in pace, so we can push each other. In the race, me, Jakob, and Robert, we were all pushing each other for pretty much the entire race. At the end, working together was especially helpful because… we all worked together to finish strong and pass as many people as possible.”
Andover Boys Cross Country will race at home on Saturday against Choate Rosemary Hall.
