By Emily Bulczynski
Sports Reporter
On Thursday afternoon, the Newton South Boys’ Cross Country squad fell to DCL rival Acton-Boxborough. Despite a strong 37 points in their first dual meet of the season at Cold Spring Park, the Lions team was no match for Acton-Boxborough’s 21 points, as the team with the lowest score wins in cross country.
Newton South’s top five varsity runners, Bhavik Nagda, Gal Fudim, Seth Walensky, Will Licho and Jack Landrigan, placed third, fourth, ninth, tenth and eleventh respectively.
In addition to the top varsity runners from South, Sophomore Ben Powdermaker ran his first cross country race ever as part of varsity, coming in as the sixth runner from South. Finishing closely behind him were Seniors Max Lavey, Ben Fisher, and Yifan Xu.
The junior varsity race also had a strong representation of Newton South, including Sophomores Stevie Sheldon and Jared Stotsky sweeping first and second.
“The second five people need to push up,” reflected Powdermaker after his varsity race. Having a pack of runners all around the same time adds a lot of depth to a cross country team, something that is especially valuable during big meets later in the season.
“We were in a pack but I think we could’ve just pushed ourselves more,” Lavey said.
This post-race feeling of striving for improvement was a common theme throughout the entire team, on both varsity and junior varsity.
“The first race is always kind of interesting,” Licho said, “because you want to see how you’re doing but you can’t go all out.”
Moving away from this first meet, the Newton South boys are expecting improvement as the season progresses.
“Our team has generally been one that picks it up throughout the season, so I’m excited to see what our team does,” said Senior Captain Nagda. According to him, most of the team is “still up and coming.”
“[We] have some new varsity guys who are looking pretty good this season,” Walensky said.
The Lions have a positive outlook on future races due to a strong potential for improvement from the entire team, especially from promising freshmen such as Danny Collins and Ethan Jacunski.
On Wednesday, the boys are racing on their home turf, Cold Spring Park, again during a tri-meet against DCL opponents Wayland and Waltham.
“We can only do better from here. We’re going to push ourselves,” Junior John Floros said.
