The start of the 2018 cross country season couldn’t have gotten off to a better start than it did on Saturday at the Northampton Invitational for new Emmaus head coach Kelly Bracetty.
Her girls team had its best finish in program history as they finished third overall, while the boys also enjoyed an outstanding showing placing in the top 10.
“We had an INCREDIBLE day!”, said the Hornets first year head coach. “We took third place overall out of 25 teams and we were the top Eastern Pennsylvania Conference team beating both Easton and Stroudsburg. It was also out best team finish in school history at this invite (4th in 2005) and it was a great start to the season.”
“The boys were eighth out of a loaded 31 teams competing and had an incredible spread of 47 seconds between the top five runners.”
In the girls’ race, two sophomores – Keerstin Augustin and Kera Reinhard – both earned medals. Augustin was the team’s highest place-winner finishing seventh overall in a time of 20:09, while Reinhard was not far behind placing 12th (20:17). Another sophomore, Clara Kennedy, was 29th (21:14) and teammate senior Edna Creelman was one spot back finishing 30th (21:17).
For the boys, senior Jacob Brown had the highest finish and earned a medal after placing 20th overall in a time of 17:03. Teammate sophomore Keshav Shankar also had a solid race finishing 29th (17:17), while junior Mason Brown was 39th (17:38) and junior Mark Magee 43rd (17:44).
The Emmaus girls and boys junior varsity teams also had an outstanding day with both finishing first overall. The girls had a team score of 39, edging District 1’s Upper Dublin for top honors, while the boys accumulated 42 points, some 14 points better than second-place CB East (56).
Freshman Belle Lees took third place out of 176 runners in the girls’ race with a time of 21:22, while classmates Madison Toretta (22:07) and Bethany Brown (22:09) along with sophomore Olympia Curley-Katrishen (22:11) finished eighth, ninth and 10th overall, respectively.
Senior Will Bassett place third overall out of the 333 runners boys competing with a time of 17:55, while teammate sophomores Tristan Schmidt (fifth, 18:09) and Kyle Ryan (eighth, 18:14) also placed in the top 10 overall. Junior Paul Petre finished one spot out the top 10 finishing 11th with a time of 18:22 and fellow junior Colin Schaffer was 15th (18:28).
District One power Central Bucks East finished first overall in both the girls’ and boys’ team races. Individually, Stroudsburg senior Amy Conboy took home top honors for the girls with a time of 19:21, while Boyertown junior Christian McComb finished first overall in the boys in 16:00.
Emmaus will kick off its league schedule on Tuesday, September 11 with a dual meet vs Easton, Nazareth and Northampton at Lehigh Parkway starting at 4 p.m.
Follow @Emmaussports and @HornetsXC on Twitter for continued updates on the team throughout the season.