Manhattan Harrier

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Manhattan Harrier

.October 15, 2007                                                                                                                                                                   Edition No. 9

The Eagle Harrier

Manhattan Bruises Eagles’ Apple!

 Bronx, New York – Never before had the Eagles been shut out of individual medals at the Manhattan College Invite as was the case Saturday.  What happened? Can anyone make any sense of this? 

     First, the race that the Eagles were placed was as competitive of a varsity boys’ race as was run on the day.  There were seven varsity races held, and J-E was placed one of the fastest.  There were teams from New Jersey, Virginia, Florida, Vermont, Delaware, Rhode Island, Maine, Pennsylvania, and from New York in J-E’s race.  In all, there were 16 states represented with over 11,600 runners on the day.  The nation’s biggest and best invite.  To give the reader an idea of how fast this race was, the winning team was Smithtown H.S. from Long Island who scored only 60 points.  Smithtown placed all seven of its runners across the finish line before any Eagles finished.  Ouch.

     Second, the Manhattan Invite has become a cultural experience more than a competitive endeavor.  How many teams in J-E’s race had spent time in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, at Rockefeller Center, in the largest Toys ‘R Us in the world, or played video games at the ESPNZONE all after traveling 250 plus miles in a school bus, all in one day?  The boys and girls from J-E walked around Manhattan for a solid four hours.  This HAD to take some of the juice in their legs away. 

     The bottom line was that J-E walked (limped) away from Van Cortlandt Park medal-less, and perhaps a bit bruised and battered.  The squad did finish exactly in the middle of the 42 team field (21st place) with a horrendous score of 724 points.  The 2005 squad scored 378 points.  “The funny thing is that I don’t really think that we ran that poorly” said J-E Coach Roman, “collectively we competed”.  “We were about a minute slower than the 2005 squad that finished 12th”.  “A good example how difficult of a day it was, our number one runner last year was Chris Weingarth and he finished 56th in his race with a 14.35 time” added Roman, and this year, Jeff Donohue runs 17 seconds FASTER, but he finished 24 places lower”.  The J-E Junior Varsity Squad encountered about the same obstacles as well by finishing in the middle of their race with 707 points.

     Despite the race results, the trip was full of laughs and memories, and for the boys and girls from J-E, what else matters?  For the seniors who have made their last trip to the Big Apple, I hope the memories will fill you for a lifetime.