Cross-country Section 1 Coaches: Tuohy, Green, Dunn, Moroney, Sykes battle mud and win
WAPPINGERS FALLS — They’d just finished running the Bowdoin Park cross-country course, all 3.1 muddy miles of it, in separate races.
Neither was particularly proud of his time.
Never mind that they’d easily broken 17 minutes and were the only two runners out of 458 varsity boys and another 352 varsity girls to come close to doing that.
But the absence of satisfaction is one of the things perhaps helping to make Arlington’s Ethan Green and North Rockland’s Ryan Tuohy two of the best high school cross-country runners in Section 1 and beyond.
Saturday’s huge (six varsity races and multiple other freshman and junior varsity races) Section 1 Coaches Cross-Country Invitational can usually be viewed as a good test of who’ll be able to handle Bowdoin’s challenging course down the road at the Section 1 championships, the qualifier for the state championships.
But Saturday, after two days of substantial rain, it was perhaps more an indicator of who could avoid the muddiest, slickest areas and stay on his or her feet.
It was highly unlikely many personal-best times were going to be run.
Scarsdale’s Maria Roberts, at more than a minute, 25 seconds behind the time she last posted running at Bowdoin, was more the norm.
She was slowed by falling and crossed the finish wearing enough mud to make it seem like part of her attire.
Tuohy, the boys Varsity III race winner in 16:51.2, and Green, who, at 16:53, was second to him in the overall merged time of the three boys varsity races but who won the boys Varsity II, didn’t have quite as much of an adventure as Roberts, nor as much as Bronxville’s Maddy Williams, who, falling three times, probably would have garnered runner-up honors to Roberts had there been a Mud Monster award.
But Tuohy and Green were well aware of the peril.
“It was like running in quicksand. There was so much mud,” Tuohy said, although finding Coaches to be an “all-around fun race.”
With more important races ahead, Tuohy noted he ran cautiously, trying to avoid injury.
But he wasn’t out of his element, having run a week earlier in the rain at the Manhattan College Cross-Country Invitational and in some mud at the Brewster Bear.
“I’m kind of used to it,” he said of the mud.
Green, who won his race at Manhattan, is also used to it.
He thought he should have run faster, but he and the other top runners in his race “kind of sand-bagged” the early going, starting slow.
Still, he acknowledged conditions pretty much nixed any chance of running like he wanted.
“I was slipping every other step,” Green said.
“(My coach told me) one kid’s shoe got stuck in the mud and he sat in the mud to put it back on,” he noted.
That image was amusing. Funnier still was the much-talked-about incident in which a fan (the popular guess being a runner’s mom) ran from her still-running car with it stuck in the mud in a parking area a good distance from the course. She was determined not to miss a race that had either just started or was about to start.
The woman was apparently moving pretty fast but nowhere as fast as there's fast as Tappan Zee’s Bridget Dunn.
She might have been among the very few athletes to run a personal-best time for the course.
Last year, Dunn clocked 21:04.9 in the same race.
Saturday, she was one of only two girls (Northport’s Fiona King being the other) to break 20 minutes.
Dunn was neck-and-neck with fellow sophomore Sloan Wasserman of John Jay-Cross River in a wooded area about 90% through the race. But she outkicked Wasserman to the finish of the girls Varsity 2 race, crossing in 19:57.7 and Wasserman in 20:01.4.
“As it got tough, I kept pushing. It’s all mental. I just trusted myself and my coaches,” said Dunn.
Last week, she also knocked more than 40 seconds off her 2022 finish time at the Manhattan College Cross-Country Invitatioal, so her season is going well.
“I’m really happy. It just keeps getting better,” said Dunn, who just missed qualifying at Bowdoin last year for states and this year hopes to qualify along with her entire team.
Pearl River senior Mady Moroney is hoping for the same thing for her team.
Moroney, who’s gifted enough to run on the Division I level in college but has decided not to pursue a varsity sport post-high school,, is trying to make the most of her last season of cross-country, savoring every race, as well as every team pasta party.
Saturday, she won the girls 126-finisher Varsity III race by better than 11 seconds and had the seventh fastest time among all the varsity girls at 20:23.3.
Moroney, who went to states with her team in eighth and 10th grade (there were no states her freshman year due to COVID) and last year as an individual, said she ran the course thinking, “I’m struggling but so is everyone else.”
Especially folks like Roberts.
The sophomore might have felt different a couple of hours and one long shower later, but walking toward the parking lot she looked very much like someone who competed in and probably didn’t win a mud wrestling match.
Asked whether she might be thinking of playing volleyball next fall, Roberts, who runs year-round for Scarsdale, replied without even a hint of a smile, “That’s a very good question. A very, very good question.”
Top 10 individual merged times all varsity races
Boys
458 finishers
1. Ryan Tuohy, North Rockland (16:51.2)
2. Ethan Green, Arlington (16:53)
3. Ryan Sykes, Horace Greeley (17:02.3)
4. Shane Ethakkan, Nanuet (17:10.9)
5. Carter Flowers, Schalmont (17:19.4)
6. Jake Harold, Albertus Magnus (17:20.9)
7. Bobby Mayclim, Lakeland/Panas (17:25.2)
8. Indy Minkoff, Irvington (17:27.7)
9. Anish Joshi, Irvington (17:28)
10. Evan Bender, Fox Lane (17:28.1)
Top 5 each varsity race
Boys Varsity 1
161 finishers
1. Ryan Sykes, Horace Greeley (17:02.3)
2. Jake Harold, Albertus Magnus (17:20.9)
3. Matt Thomson, Eastchester (17:32.2)
4. Jayden Lloyd McKenna, Pearl River (17:32.2)
5.. Liam Ford, Brewster (17:37.4)
Boys Varsity II
151 finishers
1. .Ethan Green, Arlington (16:53)
2 .Shane Ethakkan, Nanuet (17:10.9)
3. Indy Minkoff, Irvington (17:27.7)
4. Anish Joshi, Irvington (17:28)
5. Evan Bender, Fox Lane (17:28.1)
Boys Varsity III
146 finishers
1. Ryan Tuohy, North Rockland (16:51.2)
2. Carter Flowers, Schalmont (17:19.4)
3. Bobby Mayclim, Lakeland/Panas (17:25.2)
4. Claudel Chery, North Rockland (17:36.4)
5. David Laubenheimer, John Jay-East Fishkill (17:52.4)
Girls Varsity merge
352 finishers
Girls merge
1. Bridget Dunn, Tappan Zee (19:57.7)
2. Fiona King, Northport (19:58.6)
3. Sloan Wasserman, John Jay-Cross River (20:01.4)
4. Brynn Bernard, South Lewis (20:06.8)
5. Olivia Heim, Monroe-Woodbury (20:14.1)
6. Mia Wickard, Northport (20:20.7)
7. Mady Moroney, Pearl River (20:23.3)
8. Mia Sandolo, Somers (20:28.7)
9. Gaby Castro, North Rockland (20:31.7)
10. Ainara Schube Barriola, Rye Neck (20:34.7)
Top 5 each varsity race
Girls Varsity 1
113 finishers
1. Fiona King, Northport (19:58.6)
2. Olivia Heim, Monroe-Woodbury (20:14.1)
3. Mia Wickard, Northport (20:20.7)
4. Gaby Castro, North Rockland (20:31.7)
5. Emily Wickard, Northport (20:39.7)
Girls Varsity II
115 finishers
1. Bridget Dunn, Tappan Zee
2. Sloan Wasserman, John Jay-Cross River (19:57.7)
3. Brynn Bernard, South Lewis (20:06.8)
4. Mia Sandolo, Somers (20:28.7)
5. Cassidy Donovan, Tappan Zee (20:43.7)
Girls Varsity III
126 finishers
1. Mady Moroney, Pearl River (20:23.3)
2. Ainara Schube Barriola, Rye Neck (20:34.7)
3. Caitlin Thomas, Hastings (20:43.2)
4. Clara Shingler, Pleasantville (20:48.4)
5. Jenaya Swinger, Mount Academy (20:59.3)
Top 5 teams per race with each team’s top runner noted
Boys Varsity I
17 teams scoring
1. Pearl River, 95 points (Jayden Lloyd McKenna, 17:33.2)
2. Brewster, 108 (Liam Ford, 17:37.4)
3. Briarcliff, 116 (Miles Chamberlain, 17:49.7)
4. Horace Greeley, 153 (Ryan Sykes, 17:02.3)
5. Pelham, 175 (Padraig Pearlman, 18:07.1)
Boys Varsity II
16 teams scoring
1 Arlington, 41 (Ethan Green, 16:53)
2 Irvington, 80 (Indy Minkoff, 17:27.7)
3. Fox Lane, 98 (Evan Bender, 17:28.1)
4. St. Francis Prep, 125 (Matt Forte, 18:09)
5. Nanuet, 126 (Shane Ethakkan, 17:10.59)
Boys Varsity III
19 teams scoring
1. North Rockland, 37 (Ryan Tuohy, 16:51.2)
2. Bronxville, 90 (Kieran McBride, 18:00.3)
3. Mount Academy, 117 (Alan Arnold, 17:58.1)
4. Somers, 137 (Christian Wissa, 18:03.4)
5. John Jay-East Fishkill, 159 (David Laubenheimer, 17:52.4)
Girls Varsity I
15 teams scoring
1. Northport, 71 (Fiona King, 19:58.6)
2. Monroe-Woodbury, 78 (Olivia Heim, 20:14.1)
3. North Rockland, 81 (Gaby Castro, 20:31.7)
4. Saint Anthony’s, 90 (Riley Griffith, 20:21.4)
5. South Side (Rockville Centre), 116 (Claire Bohan: 21:09.9)
'This is real cross-country': Brewster, Ketcham excel in rain, mud at Pawling's Dan Purdy
Girls Varsity II
13 teams scoring
1. Tappan Zee, 45 (Bridget Dunn, 1957.7)
2. Somers, 68 (Mia Sandolo, 20:28.7)
3. South Lewis, 85 (Brynn Bernard, 20:06.8)
4. Suffern, 99 (Grace Delaney, 21:11.2)
5. New Rochelle, 162 (Ariel Esposito, 21:44.8)
Girls Varsity III
15 teams scoring
1. Pearl River, 45 (Mady Moroney, 20;23.3)
2. Arlington, 91 (Isabel Pool, 21:31.2)
3. Mount, 116 (Jenaya Swinger, 20:59.3)
4. Bronxville, 117 (Maddy Williams, 21:26)
5. Scarsdale, 133 (Rachel Rakower, 21:15.1)
Nancy Haggerty covers cross-country, track & field, field hockey, skiing, ice hockey, girls lacrosse and other sporting events for The Journal News/lohud. Follow her on Twitter at both @HaggertyNancy and at @LoHudHockey.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Cross-country Sect. 1 Coaches: Tuohy, Green, Sykes, Dunn, Moroney win
