September 20, 2024 – Story and photos by Joshua Ross
Both girls and boys track teams are off to a 2-0 start to their seasons. Convincing wins at Silver Lake and at home vs Plymouth North and set them up for successful seasons.
Girls Team
Senior captain Clare Lowther continues to be one of the top runners in the league and one of the constants for the team over the past few years. The girls are now on their third coach in three years after George Rose accepted another coaching position in the off season. Returning to lead the Harborwomen after a 12 year hiatus is Dave Jewett, who is the son of girls coach Fred Jewett and current Mathematics Director of HPS.
“This is a wonderful group of girls and I’m just thrilled with the opportunity to actually be out there every day working with them,” Jewett explains. “I’m pleasantly surprised at how eager they are to work hard and to do their best every week, and they really care about each other as a team. That’s been evident from the start, and so just to kind of come back into that atmosphere is heartwarming for me. Feels like I’m at home in a way.”
While Jewett feels he’s a little “analog” in a digital world jumping back in over a decade removed, he says that things are basically the same.
“It’s teaching kids to be the best versions of themselves and hoping that they want to be that,” Jewett goes on to say. “Because that’s what the job is. I’m not running; I’m just trying to convince them that they can do the best jobs for themselves and be the best version of themselves they can be. And so I think when I said I was pleasantly surprised, I’m surprised how hard this group of girls wants to work and how good they want to be.”
Olivia Dorn, who is also a senior captain, believes the strength of the team is in the talent across the whole roster.
“Our team overall is very, very strong,” describes Dorn. “I feel like we’ve improved as a team a lot. And usually it’s just a couple people who are really strong, but I feel like overall we’re really working well together, and I just love this team. We’ve definitely lost a lot of senior varsity runners, but there’s a bunch of sophomore and freshman girls stepping up to the plate. And even junior girls, and it’s really awesome to see them making those changes and improving so much.”
Boys Team
Head coach Dave Jewett made some changes in the training regimen a few years ago that to be paying dividends this year. Adjustments to this past offseason’s mileage and conditioning resulted in personal bests across the board for the Harbormen in this week’s meet vs Plymouth North.
Senior captain Connor Anderson just barely missed the course record by two seconds. He won his first cross-country race with a PR of 15.51. This was over a minute better than a time trial he ran a few weeks ago. Fellow senior captain Aaron Roberts, who won last week’s race vs Silver Lake also had a tremendous time of 15.57.
“Anderson, Roberts and (junior) Gavin Anderson have been very disciplined and focused on competing at a high level and that attitude has rubbed off on (juniors) Tommy Simpson and Mitch Burm and (senior captain) Ryan Burns,” says Jewett.
“We are now a solid six deep and six more right behind them within 30 secs,” he goes onto say. “To have this many athletes running so close together makes us a very strong team.”
Anderson is looking forward to next week’s meet versus Duxbury, which could decide the league title.
“Their top three are really good,” Anderson said after this week’s meet. “We have to compete well against them. We need to have a similar performance like we did today.”
It’s a home meet on Tuesday so he thinks they will have the course advantage in the match up.