By Ira Buch ’25
Student Writer, Bearcat Sports Media

On Saturday November 4th, Hotchkiss varsity cross country teams outran their competitors in the 2023 Founders League cross country championship races. 
With seven schools taking part in the race, including Loomis Chaffee, Taft, Hotchkiss, Miss Porter’s, Choate Rosemary Hall, Kingswood-Oxford, and Westminster, Hotchkiss teams demonstrated outstanding performance in both girls and boys sections.

The girls varsity cross country team managed to secure third place in team standings with just one point difference from the second spot.  Girls junior varsity also captured third place.

“It was a really hard and fast race. We had a lot of nerves before the game, which also served as a motivation.” Sawyer Eaton ’25 commented after achieving the second place out of Hotchkiss Girls Varsity team runners. Simultaneously, Nola Lai ’25 highlighted the team spirit present throughout the game. “Our team did a good job running in a pack, just one place from each other.” she stated.

Right after that, the spectators got to observe another successful race with the boys varsity team achieving first place in the Founders League Championship Race. The Hotchkiss boys varsity team won their first Founders League championship in 2021. This year, they continued demonstrating their success with five Hotchkiss runners achieving spots in the top 10 places in individual standings.
“Before the race, we were incredibly focused and optimistic. We knew we had to run a good race and we did.” John Coffin ’25 said after the race. 

For junior varsity, Henry Thompson ’27 was the overall winner of the championship race with a time of 18:43 and a field of 98 junior varsity boy runners.  What made this day even more special is seeing Bearcat Blue in 3rd, 4th, 5th, 10th, and 15th as we placed six runners in the top 15 places.  The junior varsity Bearcats scored the lowest total points with 29 points (the sum of the top five places) since 2018.

Girls team results

Boys team results

All runners individual results

View race photos on flickr