2005 Group III Girls Cross Country Sections

The Cranford Girls team faced its toughest opposition of the year last Saturday at the North Jersey Group III Section 2 meet at Warinanco Park and although the competition figures to be even tougher tomorrow in the Group championships at Holmdel, veteran coach Ray White has numerous reasons to be optimistic that his team will improve on its third place finish of last weekend.

The team spends much time in the summer practicing at Holmdel and White almost considers it their home away from home. White believes his team to be very adept at traversing the numerous hills at Holmdel, especially his lead runner Laura Gallo.

“We feel very comfortable there. We are confident that we can meet our goal of finishing in the top three and making the Meet of Champions.”

But it will not be easy as Cranford will not only have to outrun Ridge and Voorhees, both of which defeated them at the sections, but there is the addition of powerful Colts Neck with its terrific 1-2 punch of Ashley Higginson and freshman Brian Jackucewicz.

“We know we’re going to run a lot better at Holmdel than we did Saturday ,” said White.
“I don’t know if we were overconfident after our victories there, but we seemed to come out flat on Saturday.”

Cranford had scored dominating victories in the Watchung Conference and Union County meets at the same site the two previous weeks with Gallo finishing first by considerable margins in each race.

On Saturday, Gallo battled with eventual winner freshman Melanie Thompson of Voorhees, Nicole Trainor of Ridge and Eleonora Spinazzi of Montgomery through two fast miles. At the final hill that leads to the finishing quarter mile track, Thompson broke free of the other three. Gallo was out sprinted by the other two and finished fourth in 19:18.02 her second fastest time this fall.

“She didn’t run her best race ,” said White.

Ridge packed its next four runners before Cranford’s second runner,15th place finisher Jen Hanke in 20:42.76. Right behind Jen was her freshman sister Joy in 20:43.21.

“Joy ran great. she’s really been coming on lately ,” said White.

Hannah Van Why finished 22nd in 21:03.74, giving Cranford four finishers to three for Voorhees but the Hunterdon County school pushed their last two girls in two places before Caitlin Curtis was the final scoring Cougar, 36th in 21:46. The margin of victory was 83-86 for Voorhees but Cranford only needed to be in the top five to advance.

Kristen Ford finished 43rd in 22:04.05 and Erin Hannen was 46th in 22:09.74.

The Cougar Boys will have only Joe McKenney representing them this weekend as the Junior finished a strong second in 16:34.40 and appears to be peaking at the right time.

“He’s coming on very nicely ,” said White.

“Earlier in the season we controlled his speed work because we didn’t want to burn him out. We think he will do very well this weekend.”

Josh Hanke finished 20th in 17:43.50 to just miss joining McKenney.



An increase in enrollment this year was enough to move Cranford from Central Jersey Group 2 to North Jersey Group III and it