Michael Williamson ’25 and Anthony Diaz ’25 sprint to the finish line, which lies on the Great Lawn.
Andover Cross Country’s home course begins on the Great Lawn.
Josh Lee ’24 and David Song ’26 were the 19th and 20th runners for Andover Boys Cross Country on Saturday.
Saturday 10/7 – Andover: 15, Choate: 50
In its first home race of the season on Saturday, Andover Boys Cross Country swept Choate, taking the top fourteen individual spots.
Going into the race, the team was confident about its home course, having practiced on it a lot in the week leading up to the meet. Jakob Kuelps ’25 talked about how the home course advantage helped the team succeed.
Kuelps said “It was great to be back racing on home turf and to have parents, teachers and our friends out there supporting us. It was great energy. Being on the home course definitely made us more confident going into the race knowing what was ahead. In our last meet, the Black Bear Invitational, we didn’t really know the course and we were a bit more nervous going in. We had run on the [home] course a lot the week leading up to it so we were really well prepared and excited.”
Kuelps continued, emphasizing how the team pushed one another to run faster and worked together throughout the race.
“The aim of the meet was to compete with each other, internal competition. It ended up that our first 14 runners came in before the first Choate runner. We anticipated that we would mostly be competing against our own teammates, and we all pushed each other really well which was great for the team, and we all ended up having good races. It was a really good prep for Andover vs. Exeter which will be another home race on November 4th,” said Kuelps.
Kuelps won the race and set a major personal record of 16:35 for five kilometers. Arun Kapoor ’25 talked about Kuelps’ breakthrough performance over the weekend.
Kapoor said, “Jakob Kuelps had an excellent race and a bounceback race. It was really awesome to see him go out there and get after it the way he did. He went out hard with the big group which was me, Luke Williamson (’25) and Robert Budzinski (’26). Jakob and Luke both had great races. They worked really well together and pushed each other to big personal best times. He has been super consistent with his training leading up to this and it really came together for him this weekend.”
Time running on the home course was essential to the team’s success; however, there were new surfaces being put down on Andover’s home course just a week before the race, according to Max Huang ’24.
Huang said, “The days leading up to the race we were able to get out on the course a lot which was definitely nice. The course had been recently redone so it was good to get a feel for the surfaces and scout out the tangents. There wasn’t going to be a ton of competition just because it was a dual meet. I think our strategy was really just to work well with our teammates and go for a good time.”
Andover Boys Cross Country will face St. Paul’s and Austin Prep at St. Paul’s on Saturday.
