BXC Beats NMH

After waking up to take the three-hour-long PSAT at the crack of dawn on Saturday morning, Big Red’s boys’ cross country team drove another two and a half hours to Northfield Mount Hermon for a rematch with last year’s New England Champions. Stiff off the bus with a mere 20 minutes before the race, the boys laced up their spikes unaffected by the unadvantageous circumstances. As the gun went off, adrenaline filled their bodies and all that was on their minds was beating NMH.

Senior Atticus Stonestrom managed to edge out NMH’s top runner by a whopping 10 seconds, looking strong in the final grassy straight-away. He has been undefeated this season, inspiring all his teammates.Big Red took home the win by a large margin in both the varsity and junior varsity races with cumulative scores of 21-35 and 15-50 respectively, a big success for the team as a whole.

“Atticus, as always, did a great job leading the race,” upper Alex Renaud said.

NMH is notorious for its dreaded cross country course which consists of steep, rolling hills that seem to never end. As they have much practice on their course, and since Big Red trains on mostly flat surfaces, the runners from NMH were expected to dominate at the meet. However, fortunately for Exeter, Big Red still took home the win on NMH’s home turf, as well as during their own Parent’s Weekend.

“NMH lost some major talent with the graduating class of 2016,” senior and co-captain Issay Matsumoto said.

“No matter where you come in the race, you are respected for having gone through it.”

Something that the boys noticed at NMH was that the team had outstanding sportsmanship, and genuinely congratulated the runners of the opposing team individually. Even during the race, NMH’s coach shouted the mile splits for many Exeter runners. After the race, many of the boys exchanged uplifting remarks and handshakes that left Big Red in awe, that even a team who lost on their home turf could have such nice sportsmanship.

“This is one of the things I love about the sport,” Renaud said. “No matter where you come in the race, you are respected for having gone through it.”

After this race, all the meets will be at home. Coming for Exeter’s Parent’s Weekend this week will be Deerfield, and then E/a will take place a couple of Saturdays later.

“We have two more meets until Interschols,” Matsumoto said. “So we will use those meets to get some fast times, gain some confidence and sharpen up.”