Boys’ Cross Country—

Competition Within The Team Sparks Goals

By Andy Hutchison

New Milford, Brookfield, Joel Barlow, Pomperaug … Sure, there may be some pretty tough South-West Conference teams on the schedule for the Newtown boys’ cross country team, but the members of the squad don’t have to look outside of practice for good competition.

“It’s going to be very competitive within the team,” Head Coach Dave Foss said. “I’m fairly optimistic. We have a crop of guys who put in really strong summers, which is always a good thing.”

Newtown went 10-3 and placed fifth in the South-West Conference.

The team lost three of its top seven runners, including All-State honoree Kevin Hoyt, Jordan Reed, and Jon Zigman, but the hope is that this within-the-team competition will equate to a new group of runners plugging those holes and a some success during meets this fall.

Even with the losses of some top individuals, senior captain Dave Meyer believes it will be a strong team as a whole in 2008. “I think this year’s going to be a great year,” Meyer said.

Meyer’s fellow senior captains are Brendan O’Connell and Alex DiNoto.

Other seniors who are in the mix among top seven runners (or at least challenging for one of those spots) are Adam Schankman, Tucker Grose, Anthony Csizmadia, and Drew Woods. Juniors are Andrew LaMarche, Matt Bobkowski, and Erik Hoffman; and sophomore Austin Baldour is among the potential top participants.

“I think we have a good pack,” O’Connell said.

Just how good the Nighthawks are will be revealed as the season unfolds, but the team members are shooting to improve on last year’s results and maybe even win a conference title.

The runners will focus on their regular season meets for now, but the SWC finals are only a month away (the race is October 16 at Bethel) and the Hawks are thinking about making some noise at the annual event.

“I think we have a pretty good shot of, if not winning SWCs, coming in top three in SWCs. I want to set the bar high,” DiNoto said.

“I would love to finish in the top two or three in the conference in both the regular season and the SWC championships,” Foss added. “If we can make the State Open that would be excellent.”