By LESLEY GRAHAM
The Ocean City boys and girls cross country teams raced to victory on Tuesday afternoon, defeating both visiting Hammonton High School and ACIT.
The boys squad defeated Hammonton and ACIT with a 15-50 score, taking the top nine spots against both teams.
Coming off a one-point loss to Mainland in a tough dual meet last week, the Red Raider boys ran as a pack this time out to help with their training, explained Ocean City Head Coach Matt Purdue.
“We were excited to see the front group run as a pack. That was a team strategy to help close the gap between our first seven runners. We have a young team with only three seniors out of 24 runners. It was good to see the team motivated by our close loss to Mainland last week, using that to fuel their fire going forward,” Purdue said.
There has been a consistent top three this season in Chris Sardy, Owen Ritti and Nick Scarangelli in different combinations.
“It’s been good to see these guys push each other and have a big race when we need them to. We are looking forward to being in the mix as championship and title racing gets underway,” Purdue said.
On the girls side of things, Ocean City defeated ACIT 15-50 and beat Hammonton by a score of 15-49. Hammonton placed a runner in the top seven, preventing a shutout by Ocean City.
Ocean City Head Coach Trish Henry, who is in her 19th season as the head coach of the girls program, has been delighted with how her team has performed this season.
“Overall we ran a good race today, went out hard and gave ourselves some things to work on this week,” Henry said.
“We have a ton of runners who are dedicated and working hard, but we don’t necessarily have a lot of experienced runners. Our top runner this meet was Chloe Care who is a freshman, followed by Cheryl Connell, who is back in the mix after dealing with an injury last season,” Henry said after the race.
“Our goal is always to stay healthy and realize that every day is a work in progress as we continually challenge ourselves to be the best we can,” she added.
Both of Ocean City’s cross country teams will be home again next week to honor their seniors in the final home meet of the 2021 season.
