New Richmond’s girls cross country team qualified to this weekend’s Division II regional meet in Troy by placing fifth in the district meet at Voice of America Park in West Chester Township. Team members are, from left: junior Izzy Maloney, senior Sierra Abney, sophomore Elizabeth Hauserman, sophomore Riley Davis, junior Morgan Smith and junior Izzy DuFau. Photo courtesy Garth Shanklin, New Richmond schools.
Pride of Lion runners overcomes small pack to win SBAAC
By Dick Maloney
Contributor
Cross country courses have hills, valleys, sometimes some mud, but no hurdles.
The course New Richmond’s girls cross country team has taken this season, though, required them to clear obstacles unique to the Lions. In the end, they crossed the tape and hoisted the Southern Buckeye Conference American Division championship trophy for the second consecutive year, and will continue running into the Division II regional meet this weekend at Troy High School.
Four of the top five runners from the 2022 league champion team returned – but only six runners total, the minimum to score team points in meets. First-year coach Toby Lewin was forced to “recruit” – he thought he had two incoming freshmen, but they decided to play other sports. He found a senior, Sierra Abney, who was a distance runner on the track team, as well as a cheerleader, to take the roster to seven.
With little margin for injury or illness, the Lions, naturally, had to deal with injury and illness.
“I knew the girls were defending SBAAC champs, so they knew how to fight, so my expectations were high,” Lewin said. “However, throughout the season it seemed that
someone was always sick or injured. This made the beginning of the season a little hard,
but towards the end they all started getting healthy and times were coming down.”
Lewin tracked times, for both his runners and rivals, on the milesplit.com website, trying to determine where improvement was needed as the SBAAC meet neared – in particular, Clinton-Massie drew his attention. The gap kept narrowing.
“I knew Clinton Massie was going to be tough to beat, they were actually running better times than we were. As the season started drawing closer and closer to the end, the point gap kept getting smaller and smaller. The final night before league my virtual meet had us in a tie with Clinton Massie and the outcome would have been decided by our sixth runners with Massie being the victors,” Lewin said. Cross country teams cores are determined by the places of the first five runners – one point for first, two for second etc …; ties are broken by the sixth-place runner’s finish.
On race day, the Lions outperformed projections, with four runners in the top 20 and a team score of 47. Clinton-Massie had three in the top 20, and a team score of 57. (Note – both SBAAC divisions, American and National, compete together, and results are filtered by division.)
“I always try to train my teams to run their (personal records) at the end of the season. It worked out perfectly; on average the ladies improved by (1 minute, 23 seconds) from the previous week’s race,” Lewin said. “I know the league course (at Wilmington College) was off due to last-minute changes, but the other coaches figured about a 36-second difference.”
Sophomore Riley Davis was the top New Richmond finisher a SBAAC, third overall in a time of 19 minutes, 48 seconds. Davis’s worst finish this season was 11th, at the Mason Invitational. “Not only is her performance at meets impressive, her work ethic at practices (is) also,” Lewin said. She placed eighth at Saturday’s district meet at Voice of America Park,
Classmate Elizabeth Hauserman dropped 1:40 from her previous personal best to place ninth overall at SBAAC, in 20:35, and was 17th at district. Lewin and his staff gave her a goal before the league meet to finish within 43 seconds of Clinton-Massie’s Malea Beam – she beat that by 38 seconds. Beam finished in 20:28.
Junior Izzy DuFau, the top returning runner, bettered her 2022 league meet time by two minutes. Davis, Hauserman and DuFau were co-captains.; the first two were selected first-team All-SBAAC American Division, and DuFau and Abney made second-team.
As the middle school coach before taking over varsity, Lewin was familiar with the younger runners, and knew what to expect from them. The performance of Abney, however, was a pleasant surprise. She dropped almost five minutes from her opening-meet time of 25:59, to 21:10 and a 16th-place overall finish (and third-best New Richmond time).
New Richmond entered Saturday’s district meet with the goal of advancing as a team to regionals for the second consecutive season, and, beyond that, positioning Davis as a state qualifier. She was ninth at district and 28th at regional last season, and Hauserman was 17th and 68th. Junior Morgan Smith was 43rd at SWOC this year, and 21st at district and 85th at regional in 2022.
Looking further out, Lewin hopes to build the roster by retaining the middle school runners entering the program next season, and finding athletes from other sports, such as Abney, willing to try something new.
New Richmond girls cross country roster
Senior – Sierra Abney.
Juniors – Izzy DuFau, Aliyah Kroger, Izzy Maloney, Morgan Smith.
Sophomores – Riley Davis, Elizabeth Hauserman.
Freshmen – Andi Davis, Lacy Smith.