The announcer named the top five schools in the Mid-Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAC) cross country championship, which took place on Saturday, Oct. 25. “Fifth place,” the announcer read: “Saint Andrews. Fourth place: Flint Hill.” The excitement grew as the top three teams were announced. “Third place: Sidwell. In second place: Potomac School.” No cheers were louder than those when the announcer named GDS the first-place winner—MAC champions, for the first time since 2021.
The seven varsity men’s runners, four of whom sported matching buzz cuts, took the stage. The runners cheerfully held up a banner to solidify their victory.
Though the race was the standard five-kilometer distance, freshmen Ken Saito and Halle Epstein described the course as harder than others they’d run this season because of its steep and hilly terrain. The race took place at the Agricultural History Farm Park in Derwood, Maryland. However, senior Charlotte Glendinning, a women’s team co-captain, didn’t mind. “The course can tend to be a little hilly, so it isn’t one of those automatic [personal record] courses,” she said, “but it is a very classic cross-country course.”
GDS participated in five races on Saturday: the MAC and ISL varsity and varsity B races and the MAC freshman/sophomore race. GDS is not in the Interstate Atlantic Conference (IAC), so it did not participate in the IAC varsity and varsity B races that took place at the meet. In every race the Hoppers ran, at least one GDS runner placed in the top ten.
According to Epstein, support from teachers, family, friends, teammates and even rival teams helped her stay motivated during the race. Many people brought green pom-poms and big signs for different members of the GDS cross-country team.
In the MAC varsity race, four GDS runners placed in the top ten of the 49 runners, and GDS won first place with 37 points. Co-captain senior Oliver Wolin finished in second with a time of 16:20, and junior James Fitzgibbons ran a personal best of 17:15 and placed ninth. In cross country, the team with the lowest number of points wins, and the number of points is the sum of the finishing places of its top five runners.
GDS finished fourth of fourteen teams in the Independent School League (ISL) varsity race with 117 points, and junior Shira Wenthe finished second of the 97 runners with a time of 18:14. Wenthe holds the GDS cross-country record for the women’s five-kilometer race with a time of 18:02.
“I was very excited to see everyone put their training to good use,” Glendinning said. “There was a general sense today of joy and everyone feeling like we were really doing something great as a team.”
Head coach Anthony Belber chose seven of the fastest underclassman boys who did not participate in the varsity or varsity B races to run in the MAC freshman/sophomore race. Saito said he felt a lot of encouragement, but he also said he felt pressure because the race was the first event of the day. All seven GDS racers finished in the top ten of the 18 runners, and sophomore Arav Bapna and freshman Hugo Fine placed second and third, respectively.
Nine schools competed in the ISL varsity B race. GDS finished in fourth place, earning 69 points. Freshman Lucy Newman and sophomore Nikki Smallwood finished in sixth and seventh place, respectively, of 125 runners. (Newman is a reporter for the Bit.)
In the MAC varsity B race, senior Oliver Malkin set a personal record of 18:10, earning second place among the 164 runners. Sophomore Heath Holley also set a personal record, placing third with a time of 18:20. GDS earned 27 points, beating Sidwell Friends by only one point to win the race.
In addition to the four runners in the varsity race, seven other athletes sported buzz cuts at the meet. The runners shaved their hair for a psych in the week before the meet. Sophomore Parker Dunbar attributed the success of the men’s team to their buzz cuts. “The buzz cuts make us more aerodynamic,” he said. “They connect us spiritually.” (Dunbar is a reporter on the Bit.)
CORRECTION (Oct. 27 at 8:33 a.m.): The original version of this article mistakenly said MAC stands for Mid Atlantic Conference.