Both teams from Woodstown, Schalick qualify for state cross country championship with top 5 finishes at DREAM Park; Wildwood’s McCracken upsets Hadfield in girls G1 race

By Al Muskewitz
Riverview Sports News

LOGAN TWP. – Every team that qualified for the state cross country meet from the South Jersey sectional at DREAM Park Saturday will be going forward with an abundance of momentum and confidence. It’s doubtful, though, many will be bringing as much fun to Holmdel as the Woodstown girls team.

The Wolverines have so much fun inside their ranks they just might need an extra trailer to carry it all with them.

The Woodstown girls are heading to the state meet as a full team for the first time since 2016 after finishing third in the South Jersey Group I race here, just a few points from second.

To help them keep the pressure down and their focus up, there are a couple extra items in and around their tent to keep the juju positive. 

Consider:

First-year coach Michelle Williams gave each of her runners a hand-made bracelet with their name on one side and the team motto on the other — “F-E-A-R”, not a call for something to be overcome, but rather something to redefine: “Forget Everything And Run.”

“So much of this is the mental part and just leaving it all behind and coming out and doing the job you know you can do,” Williams said. “When you get on the line, when you’re a teenager, you’ve got school and you’ve got relationships and you’re worried about college and all these other things. Then you get out here and the beauty of running is you can forget about all that stuff and just go. It’s all about the running when you get out here.”

She reads them passages from a book she picked up on Amazon, “Mindful Thoughts for Runners,” for inspiration while they huddled in their blankets waiting for the day to begin. The messages Saturday were Pace and The Power of Breath. It’ll be part of their routine going forward. 

Wolverines boys coach Steve New lovingly calls them “turkeys” and they’ve embraced it. They have two turkey pillows – one named Fred – a turkey doll in a Woodstown XC shirt, a handful of turkey feathers from their last meet and a working turkey call among their effects.

“Because we’re all so close, it’s just a fun silly time,” said sophomore Lilian Norman, the Wolverines fastest finisher Saturday in her first race back since early October. “We don’t judge each other because we’re all cross country kids and we’re all silly.”

In addition to the fun stuff, they’ve gone through a Cross Country Psych 101, a classroom exercise a couple weeks ago that was basically a blind walk through the virtual meet, to convince the runners they really do belong among the contenders. The actual numbers were better than what the runners presumed. 

Seeing those actual numbers gave them the realization they could actually do it and that belief, Williams said, was a “huge factor” in getting through the race Saturday. It didn’t hurt their motivation the Woodstown boys qualified for state an hour earlier.

It’s all just Williams playing to her strength.

“I’m actually not historically a coach,” she said. “I’m not an athlete. I’m a scout leader. I’m a science teacher. I’m a lot of other things. I’m a 26-year veteran of high school teaching in the state of New Jersey. I know how relationships with kids work and I know how to motivate kids to do things they don’t think they can do.

“That was kind of my thing. I told Steve at the beginning of the season you’ve got all the cross-country knowledge. The thing I can bring to the table is the communication, organization and just understanding how to mold the kids into their potential … because so much of this is definitely appreciating and trusting the fact you can do this.”

The Wolverines placed three of their runners among the top 10 counters (top 12 overall), four of their six set PRs – counters Norman (20:26.75), Anabel Schaal (21:29.53) and Samantha Sterner (23:27.01) and Arianna Mott (24:50.62) – and they scored 69 points, just three behind runner-up Haddon Twp. 

It was their best sectional finish since a runner-up in 2016, the last time they took a full team to the state. Their fourth-place finish in 2020 would have qualified, but they didn’t run a state meet that year due to COVID.

“Historically we’ve always had trouble having enough girls to qualify – to have five finish,” Williams said. “This year we struggled, too, just with the six we have with injuries and illness.

“This is actually the first race all season all six girls started and finished the race. That was my goal for today. I wanted all six of us to start and finish the race because as a team I feel like they just needed to feel like they accomplished something this season together.”

Schalick grabbed the final qualifying spot with a fifth-place finish. Audubon took the girls title with 53 points. Wildwood’s Macie McCracken won the race (18:38.27), holding off Schalick’s Jordan Hadfield down the stretch 

McCracken said it was both exciting and surprising to win. She had been chasing Hadfield all season and finally caught her in the biggest race of the year to date. She took the lead coming out of the woods with about a mile left and never let it go. She won by 16 seconds.

“That was my best run all season,” she said. “I’ve been racing Jordan probably every week since the season started. She’s been obviously really good competition and beats me by a good amount every time, but today I just really, really was feeling good and felt like I could beat her.

“I did not expect to beat her. She definitely ran well, but I also think that this is a one-time thing. I wouldn’t beat her again. I definitely ran well for myself today.”

Hadfield was visibly upset at the finish and politely declined requests for post-race interviews.

Salem Tech’s Sarah Seiden was hoping to earn a spot at the state meet out of the stacked Group 2 race after not finishing the race last year. The senior came up short on that goal, finishing 18th overall, but she run a PR and set the school record (21:01.01). The Chargers finished ninth as a team.

South Jersey XC Sectionals

Cover photo: Wildwood’s Macie McCracken comes to the finish line after her best run of the year wins the South Jersey Group I girls cross country sectional race.