Boys’ XC Takes 4th at Interschols
With three minutes to go before the start of the New England boys’ cross country championship race, held this year at Choate Rosemary Hall, prep Varun Oberai couldn’t get his warm-up pants off. His teammates surrounded him. They offered words of encouragement and tried, in vain, to help as Oberai struggled. “It felt like an eternity,” said senior and co-captain Grayson Derossi. “But finally, he was ready. We laced up our shoes and walked to the line, our spikes crunching on the asphalt. Most teams already toed the line; their singlets billowed in the cold breeze. We packed into starting box five, huddled up, and stared into each other’s eyes. Each of us reached out a hand. ‘ACHE TE VITU!’ The air resonated with our chant. Then, silence. It was time for the greatest test we’d ever take; the biggest race we’d ever run.”
The gun went off.
As he has for the entirety of the season, lower Will Coogan led Exeter’s squad. Upper Charlie Neuhaus and preps Connor Chen, Croix Mikofsky and Oberai followed him in hot pursuit. Through the first mile, that pack remained together and dominant. Watching from the sidelines, upper Jimmy Liu described one of the more beautiful moments of the race: “Varun leaned over to Connor as they passed the first mile neck and neck. ‘Speed is, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic, capable of both influencing injury and remedying it.’ Connor glanced over, his breath uneven. He stared deep into Varun’s eyes; the brown orbs glistened under the strain of the five-minute mile. He suddenly felt a wave of emotion, and whispered: ‘Ah, speed. A magic beyond all we do here.’ As they raced together, pushing forwards, they spoke in synchronized monotony—‘come on, let’s finish this the way we started: together!’”
And they did. Coogan sprinted into the chute to claim an impressive sixth place. Behind him, Chen, Neuhaus, Oberai, and Mikofsky, respectively, all finished within fifteen seconds of each other – no small feat in a five-kilometer race with hundreds of competitors. In the end, though, Exeter’s pack proved inadequate. The team finished a distant fourth, with 120 points to first-place Andover’s 71.
The boys claimed their only victory of the day in the junior varsity race. But that victory was a commanding one; seven of the top ten finishers ran for Big Red. And Exeter scored a near-perfect 21 points—the second place team, St. Paul’s, racked up exactly 100.
At first glance, the results of the day seemed a disappointing end to a season of high hopes. But members—past and present—of Exeter boys’ cross country made very clear that they felt only one emotion: Pride.
Atticus Stonestrom ‘17, last year’s New England prep school cross country champion, journeyed from Oxford to watch his team race. “Seeing the sweat-stained singlets and the knit-browed agony in every Exeter face that crested the final hill, I knew that no one was going to leave the race without having given up a part of themselves to it—to the course, to their competitors and, above all, to their teammates,” he said. “This, this blood sacrifice, made me as proud as I’ve ever been.”
The season has now officially come to a close. But according to Neuhaus, Exeter boys’ cross country takes no time off. “Ache te vitu. All day, every day. All year, every year. Forever.”