With their season coming to an end just a few weeks ago, the girls cross country team at HHS pulled off another incredible year.

To start, over the summer, the girls were expected to be the fifty-seventh best team in the state. But they proved the statistics wrong when they ended up seventh overall.

Their road to victory all started when they won first place in the Central Jersey Sectionals, earning them the title of Central Jersey Group IV Champions. They then advanced to Groups, and took third place at Holmdel Park on Nov. 12.

A week later, the girls ran at the Meet of Champions alongside 21 other schools. Once again at Holmdel Park, they managed to earn seventh place.

The top seven runners then moved on to the Nike Cross Regionals in Wappingers Fall, NY. Seniors Natalie Tavares, Brianna De la Cruz, Hayley and Claudia Baydar, junior Chloe Wong, sophomore Jennifer Tavares, and freshman Kate Van Pelt ran their hearts out all the way to tenth place for the whole Northeast.

Since Wong earned fourth place at the Nike Cross Regionals, she qualified for the Nike Cross Nationals in Portland, Oregon, and ran with the top 200 girls in the country.

“This cross country season was amazing for me,” Wong said. “I placed seventh in MOCs, became a part of the first team all state for New Jersey, and I qualified for Nationals in Oregon by placing fourth in the Nike Northeast Regional.”

The boys team also got the chance to run at Central Jersey Sectionals. Unfortunately, the team did not advance beyond sectionals. Seniors Jeremy Shipley, Mitchell Baron, Nathaniel Trampe, Tyler Baum, Sean Lynch, and juniors Owen Szabo and Ryan Mitchell all ran at Nike Cross Regionals as top seven runners.