Girls' XC Falls in Clash with Big Blue

ANDOVER, MA - Big Red’s girls’ cross country team ran their hardest during last Saturdays E/a race, but were ultimately beaten by the strong Andover team. The meet was the second matchup between Exeter and Andover this season, and it brought the team’s season record to 4-3.Prep Christine Hu finished first amongst Exeter’s runners for the second time and second overall in the race with a time of 20:15, outrun only by Andover’s top runner Anoush Shehadeh, who holds the girls’ course record of 17:18 and on Saturday ran it in 18:03. Upper Elsa Chinburg came in second amongst Exonians and fifth overall, with a time of 20:46.The weather conditions on Saturday, which were near perfect—sunny and in the mid-sixties—corresponded with the lively atmosphere and friendly rivalry associated with E/a weekend.“There was a lot of Exeter spirit, because this was our E/a weekend. Seeing your teammates cheer for you gives you such a big boost during a tough race,” Hu said. “It’s really unfortunate that a lot of our runners are injured, but they all went out to Andover to support the team, which was really nice.”Despite the loss, the girls remained largely optimistic about their performance. Senior co-captains Anika Ayyar and Valerie Bright described the competition as one of the season’s best due to the many broken personal records.“We lost, but we definitely saw a huge improvement from our performance last year. A lot of girls ran new personal bests and this year, it wasn’t just the Andover girls coming in the top five places,” Bright said.“We were spread out throughout the race and there were definitely girls that were closer up to the front this year, so that aspect of it went very well,” she continued.Ayyar noticed the runners particularly exerted themselves during the last ½ mile of the course, with many sprinting to achieve fastest times. “It was an open field, so we could all see that people were sprinting during the last hundred meters,” she said. “The fact that so many people had personal records during this race is testament to the stamina that has been gained throughout the course of this season.”Hu in particular pushed herself during the last hill of the course to overtake the then second-place runner, Andover’s Peyton McGovern. Finishing just two seconds ahead of McGovern, Hu had been running in third place for the majority of the race.“Coming up a huge hill, she must have decided to really shoot for it and she overtook the girl in second. She was fantastic,” Ayyar said.The team is now switching gears in preparation for Interschols at St. Paul’s this Saturday. The girls are having less intense practices in order to conserve their endurance for the meet, especially given the abundance of injuries on the team.“Everyone on the team is looking forward to Interschols, but we will be coming in with a pretty small number of runners because so many girls are injured,” Chinburg said. “We do have some really strong girls on the team, so we’re hoping to place higher than we have in past years.”Bright feels that if the girls keep their energy up, they will fare well.“If we keep running with the same drive that we did on Saturday, we’ll be in a good position at Interschols,” Bright said.