Tam Gavenas ’25 has been running during his entire time at Andover.
Andover Boys Cross Country won in its first home meet of the season against St. Paul’s, Austin Prep, and Northfield Mount Hermon (NMH). In a stand-out performance, Co-Captain Tam Gavenas ’25 beat the Andover all-time course record with a time of 15:00. Four Andover runners followed closely behind, dominating the leaderboard with five of the top six times.
Recalling the meet, Nathan Neu ’26 commented on the supportive atmosphere from spectators and Drumline’s performance on the race field. Out of 120 runners, Andover competitors were the biggest group with 40 runners.
“It was really nice. The school had the drumline come out and play for us. During the races, I was really hyped and there were a lot of people who came out to cheer. I’d say more so than in past years, other than a Family Weekend. When we do have Family Weekend, there will definitely be a ton of people watching, so I’m excited for that,” said Neu.
Charlie Gillick ’27, who earned a personal best, beating his previous time by 42 seconds, secured a spot on the course’s top 100 times of all time. Gillick attributed his success to one of his teammates, Luke Williamson ’25, whose consistent pace helped lead Gillick throughout the race.
“A lot of the time I run with Luke Williamson. He’s a bit faster than me, but he’s extremely consistent. I do better when I can stick with someone, so I try to stay on his shoulder as long as I possibly can,” said Gillick.
Gillick credited a part of his success to the team’s workouts from the previous week. The team focused on finishing the course strongly, which has been one of the team’s weaknesses in previous races.
“Leading up to the race, the coach adjusted the workouts. One was in the [Cochran Bird] Sanctuary, and then we went to the Great Lawn to practice finishing, which really helped during the race. One weakness of the team is running hills. We aren’t the best at them, so I think hill repeats might be in our future. [Head] Coach [Patrick Rielly] knows this, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s our workout [in future practices],” said Gillick.
Neu echoed this, noting that hill training is crucial to capitalize on for home course meets due to the steep hills on the infamous “Heartbreak Hill.” Neu commented on the team’s advantages during home meets where they can optimize certain racing paths to gain an edge over opposing teams.
“[Heartbreak Hill] definitely wears out everyone else, but we train on the hill, so we’re more used to it. I’ll say another big strength is that we all know the tangents here, which help us take the inside lines, the shortest distance you can go,” said Neu.
Theodore Frangakis ’27, who has PRed (personal record) every race this season, credited his most recent success to teammate Michael Williamson ’25 and re-emphasized the importance of finishing the races well. Frangakis noted how a benefit of racing with teammates is being able to push each other to better heights.
Frangakis said, “Our strength is working together and finishing together. We always make sure to push ourselves to the very end. Shoutout to Michael Williamson, he pushed me to the end. I couldn’t have gotten my PR without him, but we worked together as a team and I think that’s one of our strongest points.”
Neu also highlighted the importance of including various workouts in the training regimen, citing a new plyometric workout as one of his reasons for success. He added that the change was recent, but that improvement in performance is already apparent.
“One thing we worked on is improving our speed going up hills with hill sprints and doing things like plyometrics. Supplementing plyometrics, we obviously weren’t doing it that much because our main focus is distance running, improving our aerobic systems,” said Neu.
The team will host Phillips Exeter Academy, St. Paul’s, and Deerfield for Family Weekend on October 26.
