Andover: 22, Exeter: 35
Boys Cross Country left for its annual meet against Phillips Exeter Academy (Exeter) with high hopes and an energetic spirit. The team arrived at Exeter’s course ready to compete, knowing that this race would be one of the most significant of the season. Despite eventually losing to Exeter 35-22, the team made valiant efforts, with one of its runners, Arashi Hunter PG’25, winning first place in the race overall.
Tomas Tejapaibul ’27 shared that the team was eager to tackle the Exeter course even knowing it would present new challenges. He noted that the team had raced Exeter at almost every other meet, so the prospect of a one-on-one race was particularly exhilarating.
“Exeter has been one of our greatest rivals this season. We’ve raced against them at nearly every other meet, so we were pretty excited,” said Tejapaibul.
Sami Tokat ’26 gave a shout out to Co-Captain Jakob Kuelps ’25, mentioning that it was one of his first meets back after being on hiatus due to injury.
Tokat said, “He’s injured for quite a while, and that he had a great race, getting back into things, really leading sort of the squad, through all the drills, through everything, and having seen an all-around great race. So his performance was very well.”
Alfonso Gonzalez-Cano ’27 commented on the strengths of the team, highlighting mutual encouragement and preparedness as its biggest strengths.
“We were all very supportive. Once we finished as a team, we carried that into celebrating together. Everyone was always very positive. That is one of our biggest strengths. We also were very prepared for the course because of all the health training we’ve been doing,” said Gonzalez-Cano.
Tejipaibul emphasized the difficulty of running on a different course compared to the team’s home course, adding that although both are the same distance, being familiar with the course provides a great advantage.
“It’s the same distance, it’s different because there’s always home course advantage when we’re racing at home, we know where all the hills are. So, that’s always a pretty significant advantage. That’s why we [personal record] a lot when we’re running our home course because we know everything and we know how to run the course,” said Tejipaibul.
Despite the team’s strong performance, there were still some areas for improvement. Gonzalez-Cano noted that athletes tend to run in groups, but these groups can cause some runners to fall behind pace and others to overexert themselves.
Gonzalez-Cano said, “We usually pace off of one another. So the problem is if one of us falls behind pace, that means all of us usually end up falling behind pace. So people, I would pace off of someone and then they were actually running slower. So I ended up running slower, and then the person who was paced off of me ended up running slower as well.’’
The team has only one meet left: Interschols, which only a select few runners are racing in. The remainder of the team did an inter-squad race on the Lawn on Wednesday.
Tejapaibul said, “We only have really one meet left, and not everybody’s going to that, Interschols, so we’re going to split into two teams… And then we’re going to race against each other on the home course, and those that aren’t racing will race on Saturday, at Interschols.”
Boys Cross Country will be competing at Interschols on Saturday at Hotchkiss.
