Westfield Boys Cross Country MOC 2004

After sliding into the Meet of Champions (MOC) by the slimmest of margins, the Westfield Boys Cross Country team
made a major statement by finishing an impressive eighth Saturday at Holmdel Park. With Jeffrey Perrella and Rob Broadbent providing the second best 1-2 punch of any team, the Blue Devils finally got the measure of season long nemesis Cranford defeating the Cougars for the first time in four tries.

Perrella rebounded from a disappointing ninth place finish at the Group IV meet last week to run his finest race of the season in finishing sixth, with a Holmdel best of 16:07. Some pre-race preparations on Friday night helped Perrella use a better strategy than a week ago.

“In past races at Holmdel, I've gotten out really slowly. I thought that I was saving energy for the latter parts of the races, but I was really just handicapping myself from the gun,” said Perrella.

”So the plan for this race was to take it out hard for the first mile so I wouldn't get boxed in. This
is what Mr. (Coach Jack) Martin told me to do, and the night before the race I was
reading the Fantasy MOC posts on dyestat.com and I saw a thread about how to run Holmdel, which reinforced what Mr. Martin, said. So I took all of this into consideration, got out fast and ran my race.”

After stabilizing his breathing and getting into a good groove, Perrella was ready to make his move in the final 800 meters.
“When we left the woods and I hit the top of the clearing there at the end, I just turned over and ran down the pack
in front of me ,” said Perrella.
“ All cylinders were firing; I was kicking as hard as I could for two main reasons. I didn't want to run a bad race in front of my family and I didn't want to let down the team again.”

While Perrella has been near the top of every race this fall it has been the emergence of Broadbent as one of the top number two runners in the state that has elevated Westfield. Broadbent dropped another eleven seconds off his one-week-old Holmdel best and has been setting one personal best after another since late October. On October 2 at the Shore coaches Invitational, Broadbent had run 17:43 on the same course.

“The beginning of the season I got off to a slow start ,” said Broadbent.
“After the Shore Coaches meet we had about two and one half weeks off from meets and I trained
extremely hard which gave me a huge drop in my times. Those practices consisted of a lot of speed work as well as hill work. Even after that I was improving each week. Mr. Martin worked us all very hard up until sectionals and a lot of my improvement was because of him.”

Perrella and Broadbent are both quick to point out the importance of the third through seventh Blue Devil runners in the teams’ success, which many long time observers rank as one of Martin’s finest coaching jobs.

Another great story has been the emergence of Mike Gorski, a top pole vaulter on the track team, who was talked into doing Cross Country last spring and ran 17:30 Saturday.
“He has played an integral roll on this team being the number three or four guy on
the team. Without his performances, there would be a huge gap in the
team and we wouldn't be half as successful as we are now ,” said Perrella.

Junior Kris Kagan finished ahead of Gorski, running 17:17 as third Blue Devil
and the trio of Ameer Rogers, Jay Hoban, and Raymond Chen, all juniors, finished within nine seconds of each other.
The four will combine with Perrella to form a formidable squad next year.

Kagan, Rogers, Hoban and Chen have each performed their jobs
consistently throughout the year and continued to do so into the MOC.
All three of them were the difference in beating out Ocean City, for
eighth place,” said Perrella. The Blue Devils needed a sixth runner tiebreaker to beat out Ocean City, which also scored 223 points.


While the team success was foremost on the runners’ minds their individual performances were
superb for a school with a long history of running success.

“It was my best race in the sense that it was my fastest and most
important for the team ,” said Perrella
“I'd say I executed pretty well. In retrospect, I think I could have run faster, but isn't that the way it
always is?”

“Before the season I definitely couldn't envision placing twenty-fifth at the MOC ,” added Broadbent.
“It wasn’t until last week at Group's when I felt I had a legitimate shot at placing high at MOC.


And leave it to Perrella to put it in perspective,
“ Although beating Cranford wasn't our main goal in going into the
MOC, getting a medal was, it sill felt good. It was like icing on a
cake that was a good season”