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Running into the Past -- Series Story 1
2005 -- The Four Aces, a Big Heart, and a Race only a Mudder Could Love
Part 1 - 12/3	Part II - 12/4
Part III - 12/5	Part IV - 12/6
Remembering Hilton's Special Championship at Portland Meadows Way Back When

Who first had the idea for the Cadets of capturing a national championship is open to some fuzzy recollection and liberal interpretation. Was it Coach Szczepanik challenging his team to think big at the end of the 2004 season? Was it Caroline Schultz raising it as a goal as Hilton got ready to start its summer training? Was it a piece of every Cadet's dreams in the months before the season opened? Most likely the vision evolved from a number of sources as reality became more closely entwined with the dream.

Maybe it was just youth and inexperience that fostered an aura of confidence for the Cadets that they were in the same league as the nation's top team. Maybe it was the fact that a team that got no mention in any state previews going into the 2004 season was now getting noticed in NY. It could be that being a ways out of Saratoga's neck of the woods in Section 2 gave Hilton the chance to grow strong in the lighted area outside of the Blue Streak shadow. Maybe a group of girls of whom a few members are willing to admit were a bit on the goofball side were not getting nailed down to taking anything too seriously. Or possibly it was that the 19th-century style bloomer uniforms of Griggs' early years had been replaced by more svelte garb that looked more like, well, Saratoga's. But then again, when you're dropping big chunks of time off your 1500m and 3000m times and hurdling sharply over steeplechase barriers, it's easier to feel you can catch a Blue Streak. And the Cadet who was shedding and shredding down to the lowest levels was a determined Amanda Griggs, now fully recovered and ready to make the 2005 XC season a memorable one.

The summer of 2005 was when the campaign to get to the top took flight. Cross country requires five finishers, and the varsity core of Griggs, Sawyer, Schultz, Jones, and Herman committed to working together through July and August so that they could hit the ground running at the top level once September rolled around. Throughout the hot weeks, the Cadets pushed themselves to new plateaus of fitness. At the Eastern Regional Elite Distance Camp where the team spent a week training in August, the Cadets were very impressive, and other coaches took notice. Fairport's Rick Guido commented that Hilton was far ahead of all the other teams in the area. "They're perfectly positioned for States." The famed running expert and coach of 7 NCAA Division 3 champions at SUNY-Cortland, Jack Daniels, stated that Griggs was one of the most impressive runners he'd seen at her age, and Guido added, "If she can stay healthy, she's the real deal." Seeing the progress of his team, Szczepanik began to expand on some big thoughts and an enhanced schedule for 2005.
 

If she can stay healthy, she's the real deal.  ---Fairport coach Rick Guido, about Hilton's Amanda Griggs

In cross country, summer is also the time for swift-flying rumors, and by August it became increasingly clear that a major disruption had indeed occurred on Saratoga's march to another state and national title. Earlier in the year in late March after the end of an extended indoor season that had culminated at Nationals, the four-time XC States champ Nicole Blood had decided to stop running with the Blue Streaks, immobilized by an IT band injury in her left leg that kept her off the track for five weeks. When she began training again independently in late April, Blood was joined shortly by teammate Caitlin Lane who had also chosen to stop running with the Saratoga track team while she recovered from her own source of agony, stress fractures in the foot. After training together through the spring, both runners were able to recover well enough for Blood to capture the 5000m at the USA Outdoor Track and Field Championship, where Lane took 11th in the 1500m run.
 

Opinions from all viewpoints buzzed around the Blood and Lane decision, and much of the critical material was tied to the fact that the two were training under Lane's father Bob, who for two awe-inspiring years of the 2002 and 2003 XC seasons had helped raise a tiny Argyle team composed centrally of his daughter, Ashley and Emily Fung, and Hannah Davidson up among the top 10 teams in the nation and behind only Saratoga in the Northeast region in 2003. A lack of school funding support for the team had led to the Argyle team's demise and Lane and Davidson had moved to Saratoga, but the rumors about the whole business had swirled, and the fact that in the spring of 2005 the two Saratoga runaways were competing under the aegis of the Fast Lane Track Club certainly raised eyebrows.

During track season, the path that Blood and Lane would take in the fall was still a tiny bit uncertain, but by July the news that the runners' split with the Kranick program was final and that they would again run independently left the XC world in a state of confusion. The certainty that Saratoga would be viewed in the far distance at the top of the rankings was no longer so certain. No one was ready to pull the throne out from under the team that had won 8 of the last 9 state championships and was led by two of the top 3 returning NY runners in Lindsey Ferguson and Hannah Davidson. But moving the chair was no longer out of the question. "Now we think it's possible," said Hilton's Ashley Jones. Things were definitely getting interesting.

 

In a trio of pics from Tully Runners' preseason coverage, Amanda Griggs at left and Allison Sawyer on right run with Shelby Herman just behind. Credit: Tully Runners 2005 preseason report

Ashley Jones at the midway point. Credit: Tully Runners 2005 preseason report

Caroline Schultz right in the action. Credit: Tully Runners 2005 preseason report

At Hilton, Coach Szczepanik noted the new development out at Saratoga, but he was far more attuned to the developments on his own team. After tough summer workouts, senior captain Amanda Griggs had worked herself into the best shape of her career, and with a flawless running style that wasted nothing, her potential for wreaking havoc during the season looked enormous. Following breakout cross country and track seasons, the "Twin Towers," the tall blondish duo of Allison Sawyer and Caroline Schultz looked ready to fall in close behind Griggs, with Sawyer exhibiting the hard-driving form that made her one of the top 20 returning runners for 2005 and Schultz using her big rumbling style to push herself to the finish. Right up there in the pack quintet were the other "twins" Ashley Jones and Shelby Herman, the smaller semi-identical brunette part of the squad whose ability to hang tough had earned them speed ratings up around the 130 level in 2004. Herman was especially known for her upbeat approach to the future, making even the darkest times seem like a momentary eclipse.

Backing the core group were a contingent of hard workers led by Nicole Griffiths, Calleen Childs, and Erin Pratt who could always be relied on for a strong effort but who were too many minutes behind the top 5 to give Hilton a strong chance at a state title if they ever had to fill a 5th runner role. Further back in development were Ashlea Keene, Teresa Buechel, Kristen Campbell, Hillary O'Sullivan, and Becca Smarcz. The camaraderie on the Cadets was strong. "It's almost like they're all sisters," said Szczepanik, "they watch out for each other." Advice on good running, eating and sleeping habits flowed from the veterans to the new recruits.

It's almost like they're all sisters. They watch out for each other.  ---Hilton coach Mike Szczepanik, about his team

Among the wise eating advice that flowed from the veterans was the importance of that time-honored XC ritual, the Friday night pasta party. The nutritional benefits of the spaghetti fests may be debatable, but the value of the team bonding aspects are clear-cut. And for a squad that had a prankish side to it, the chance to work in some good-natured jokes during the hours of pasta gobbling was a given. The hyper-talkative and unsuspecting Caroline Schultz once ended up putting away a double portion of meatballs when her teammates pulled the old "constantly replenishing plate" trick on her while she was on a spiel.

Strong in spirit and strong at the top, but still not terribly deep and very dependent on clean bills of health, Hilton was ready to take to the warpaths. The XC online services had already begun building the expectations for Hilton by the time September hit. Weeks earlier, Bill Meylan of Tully Runners had published his preseason guide with newfangled Bill James-ish style XC analysis that stated he still believed Saratoga was the team to beat, but if there was one team that could do that beating, it was a Hilton team that was largely unheralded outside NY. In a statement that would end up having a bit of a twist, Meylan said that he could foresee Saratoga losing the States title but then going on to win the differently constructed Nationals race. Elsewhere, the Harrier rankings were not quite so quick to anoint Hilton as one of the top contenders in the US, but there was still a lot of respect in an 18th slot nationally and 3rd place ranking in the Northeast region behind Saratoga and NJ's Roxbury, and one spot ahead of a Suffern team that finished fairly close behind Hilton at 2004 States. 18th was pretty nice, but it was hardly a spot that you would give better than 1000-to-1 odds of winning a national championship.

By the time Hilton was ready to race on September 17th, the rankings had already dropped them to 4th in the NE behind 2004 Class C champ Bronxville. The Cadets got the season going in their first invitational in the Wildcat meet at Marcus Whitman High near Canandaigua Lake. The runners were greeted by a howling wind, and Hilton roared to the win with Griggs, Schultz, and Sawyer going 1, 3, 4. The Cadets took 5 of the top 10 places while outpacing the 2004 Class B champ Honeoye Falls-Lima by 25-69. Not bad for starters, and the performance leapfrogged the team into the #2 spot in the NE rankings, where they would remain for a long time.

The following week was the Queensbury Invitational, held at the site that would host the 2005 state championship. A high-profile event that also served as a States prep, it pitted Hilton against highly ranked teams from Suffern and Shenendehowa plus Honeoye Falls-Lima again and an Academy of the Holy Names squad that would go on to win the second level Class A championship in 2005. Any doubts that remained that Hilton was one of the top two powers in the state were dispelled by the team's dominating performance as it won by 39-86-92 over Holy Names and Suffern, with Shenendehowa far back. The cadets packed 4 runners into the top 10 and all 5 scorers in the top 18. But it was Griggs who would again provide the biggest highlights in a duel at the top with Suffern freshman Shelby Greany, who had finished 8th at States in 2004. Fighting off numerous attacks from Greany, Griggs charged home to smash the course record by a jaw-dropping 50 seconds in 17:48. The Cadet captain's comeback from the 2004 disappointment was complete as she described her feelings about her winning finish, "I wanted it so bad I was going to do anything to keep her from passing me."

 

I have zero pain right now. I'm really excited about that!  ---Hilton runner Amanda Griggs

Queensbury energized Hilton and officially elevated it in the public view as the leader of the chase pack hunting Saratoga. The Blue Streaks had laid down a thumping on a big national field in NC that same weekend in the Great American Race of Champions, beating the 2nd place team by 68-220 in a race won by reigning Footlocker champ Aislinn Ryan of Warwick. Saratoga coaches Art and Linda Kranick were in the midst of rebuilding the the national champs team that had lost 3 of its top 5 runners and 4 of the varsity from 2004. Behind Lindsey Ferguson and Hannah Davidson and a solid group of runners mainly from the 2004 JV squad, the work was going well. But the reality had set in for the Blue Streaks that they would be in exhausting. hard-spiking, head-to-head battles with another NY team in three to four meets through Nationals. During the past 12 years, only Shenendehowa and Colonie from Saratoga's Section 2 had been able to successfully challenge the Blue Streaks' reign, but now Hilton was threatening to move into the royal suite. And Hilton's frontrunner was running wild and free. ""I have zero pain right now," said Griggs. "I'm really excited about that."

The McQuaid Invitational on the first Saturday in October again provided Hilton a chance to show its stuff. A meet that attracted teams from across New York, plus Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Canada, McQuaid had a big medley of races for schools of all sizes, but it was the Mixed Varsity-Large Schools race that was the showcase for the girls. The Cadets were ready and blasted the race, capturing 4 of the top 6 places and 5 of the top 12 to limit their tally to 24 points, 31 points better than a rising Fayetteville-Manlius squad that would go on to finish 6th at States. In an earlier race, Kate Van Buskirk of Turner-Fenton in Ontario had gone under 17:00 to set the girls course record at 16:58, breaking the mark set by the legendary Molly Huddle of Notre Dame-Elmira. This was a prize that Hilton's Griggs had to get. "We told her it was a fast course and perfect weather," said Szczepanik. Running by herself for most of the race, Griggs chopped another 5 seconds off the record at 16:53.

The excitement was growing among team members and in the Hilton community as the Cadets reached #11 in the nation in the rankings. "When you think about how many schools and how many teams there are in the country, it's just like, 'Wow!' I can't even fathom us being 11th," said Griggs. "It's kind of high pressure, but it's very cool." Saratoga was ten places ahead at the top, and the first test against the Blue Streaks was the following Saturday, October 8. The site of the contest was the birthplace area of American cross country at the famed Van Cortlandt Park course in the Bronx for the Manhattan Invitational. Hilton had never recently made the trip to run in what was arguably the premier girls invitational race in the nation, Manhattan's Eastern States race, but now it was putting itself on the line with not only Saratoga but 4 more of the top 10 teams in the NE region such as Suffern, Warwick Valley, and Bronxville plus SE powers Eleanor Roosevelt and Tatnall. Hilton needed an ace in its first nationally prominent meet.

 

 

When you have to work hard to get something it means more to you.  ---Saratoga coach Linda Kranick

On the Saturday of Manhattan a driving rain buffeted the 20 teams lined up in the 2.5 mile Eastern States race, some of whom had designs on toppling the top team in the nation. Szczepanik's strategy for Hilton was the time-honored strategy for Van Cortlandt that Hilton would also use elsewhere in the future, "Get out and attack hard." From the gun and over a lake-style Parade Grounds starting charge, Griggs pushed to the front with Saratoga frontrunners Davidson and Ferguson, with Cadets Schultz and Sawyer a few steps behind as the lead group surged up the first hill. The runners fought their way through the slippery Back Hills and on toward the 2005 finish area across the field from the famed Tortoise-and-Hare statue.

Warwick Valley's champ Aislinn Ryan broke away from the lead group to reel off a jaw-dropping 14:04 time to crush the course record under very adverse conditions. Griggs chased the top Saratoga girls to the finish and fell a few steps short of overtaking Ferguson for 3rd, as Davidson took 2nd about 4 seconds ahead of the Cadet captain. Schultz finished 17th, and Herman, Jones, and Sawyer all got over the line before Saratoga's 4th runner, but in the end Hilton's winning streak ended in a narrow 133-147 loss to the top ranked team, and Suffern and Warwick more than 40 points back. Griggs led the Hilton team over to the Saratoga camp to congratulate the champions, and the Cadets naturally hoped that the Blue Streaks would have a chance to return the gesture some day.

Afterwards a proud but relieved Coach Linda Kranick of Saratoga praised her team's effort, noting "when you have to work hard to get something it means more to you." The Blue Streaks' unbeaten streak was still intact midway into its 6th year, but the top national ranking was shaken. The Cadets' own hard work to earn a narrow loss to Saratoga had energized them, and they were sure their hunt pack was closing in and they could do a lot better once they focused harder on their target. Szczepanik decided to cancel a planned trip to the Clarence Invitational the next week and put all energy into week-and-a-half buildup for the local postseason meets that would carry Hilton into its second big showdown with Saratoga at States.

There were a few discomforting aspects to the post-race coverage of the Manhattan race, however. The Rochester area news heralded the Hilton achievement in the Eastern States race, but the main online articles elsewhere barely mentioned the team other than to note that Hilton finished 2nd to Saratoga. Griggs' name was mainly absent from the coverage even though she finished less than a second behind Ferguson. Clearly the team's high national ranking hadn't registered yet with the guys recapping the race. And even though Hilton broke into the top 10 by rising three more places in the national rankings to number 8 following the narrow loss, Saratoga was demoted to number 2 for not winning more impressively over their new state rival. Naturally the team that was moved to the top was one from California, and just as naturally that team would suffer from a bit of exposure a month and a half later in Portland Meadows against New York teams. In any case, the Cadets were still flying a little under the radar of much of the XC media, but the important point was that they were still flying.
 

The first meet after the post-Manhattan layoff and build-and-boost period was the League meet. At one time a few years back, this meet had been a tester for Hilton. Now it was an easy-going affair for the team as the new powerhouse swept Rush-Henrietta and Pittsford Sutherland. A few days later, armed with a new #5 national ranking, the Cadets ran in the slightly more challenging Monroe County meet at Mendon Ponds Park. A few years later the Monroe would become one of the hardest fought county championships in the nation, but Hilton dominated the 2005 event. Two points from perfection at 17, Hilton also got treated to a course record by Griggs, who ran 18:06 to slice 21 seconds off the old mark.

A week later the Cadets traveled to Marcus Whitman High School to run in the Section 5 Class AA State Qualifier race that would earn the team their second ticket to States. A Hilton win was already a near certainty since the AA race featured mainly just Monroe County teams. But there was an added element to the race because it was being held on the site of the 2003 States championship meet where Griggs had earned her last States medal. Now in top form, she was targeting a 4th course record on the season, but this one set by Saratoga's Nicole Blood in a race where then-current national champ Aislinn Ryan had finished 4th. As expected, Hilton again ran away with the sectional title scoring only 17 points, and in a year that had so far experienced an almost unstoppable Griggs, she broke Blood's record by 3 seconds in 18:25.

As the Cadets moved toward a second big season's showdown with Saratoga at States at Queensbury, they also had another reason to celebrate. In her third year at SUNY-Geneseo, Shannon Griggs had left her foot problems behind and soared upward with a team that was ranked among the top of the NCAA Division 3 teams. After placing 3rd in the State University of New York Athletic Conference (SUNYAC) championship won by SUNY-Geneseo in October, Shannon led her team to the New York State College Track Conference championship by placing 1st. The NYSCTCC championship was on the same day as Hilton's Sectional win, so the Griggs family had a lot to be proud of that weekend.

On November 11, Hilton made its second trip of the season to Queensbury for the next day's state championship. For the first time since 1992 when Washingtonville had edged Saratoga by 1 point, an extremely close matchup was predicted for the large school race, now the AA. Besides Saratoga and Hilton, the contest also included highly ranked Warwick and Suffern along with 5 other qualifiers. National champ Aislinn Ryan of Warwick was the big favorite to succeed Nicole Blood, and she indeed lived up to expectations by taking control of the race and smashing Amanda Griggs' course record by around 25 seconds with a time of 17:23.9.

I could hear Amanda breathing kind of hard. We were telling her, 'C'mon, Amanda. Hang with us.'  ---Hilton runner Caroline Schultz

The battle for the AA team title was a closer affair. Amanda Griggs started out up front with Saratoga's Davidson and Ferguson early on, and a Hilton surge looked like it might finally have a shot at ending the Blue Streaks' winning skein. But then for Griggs, history started to repeat itself as she could feel something going wrong with her left leg. Though she fought to keep up front, she started to drift back. Schultz and Sawyer knew something was wrong with the captain as they caught up with her and heard the labored breathing. Griggs signaled her teammates to move on, and they pushed ahead to take Hilton's first ever top-10 finishes at States at 7th and 8th. Griggs hung on to medal at 11th, Herman nabbed the 17th place medal, and Jones got 25th. Davidson and Ferguson took 2nd and 3rd for Saratoga, and when the Blue Streaks' 5th runner Kaitlyn O'Sullivan crossed the line in 27th, Saratoga clinched a 46-47 win. Hilton came out as the top team at the meet in the merged scores of the teams in all the races, but the Class AA trophy had slipped away.
 

 

Afterwards Griggs blamed herself for the team's tough loss, knowing that if she had been able to run like she had at Manhattan, the Cadets would have won by 1 point. But more meets lay ahead, and the big question was, what was going on with the leg? If the answer was a return of the major stress fractures in the foot, then Griggs' season was likely over and Hilton could wave goodbye to any dreams of ending on top. But the ailment seemed to be more in the left shin, and the regimen of only light workouts to keep the pain from increasing was prescribed. Griggs was also cheered by the news that her sister Shannon had finished 3rd in the Division 3 Atlantic Regional meet, and her winning SUNY-Geneseo squad was heading to Ohio the next weekend for a bid for a first national championship win.

Szczepanik and the team had little time to spend fretting about States because some very major meets were hurtling toward them, though there was one less championship to worry about due to a very controversial coach's call. One week after the States in NY was the Federation championship, which brought together the top-performing teams from States, a few top non-qualifiers such as Bay Shore and Shenendehowa, and the representatives of the New York City schools who filled out the bottom 11 slots of the 27 teams. The meet was yet another very high-level race in a string of uninterrupted contests on the way to Nike and Footlocker Nationals, and Szczepanik worried that his already limping team could not afford another stressful battle when the need for recovery time had become paramount. With the Federation included, the top teams in NY had 7 big meets in a row from late October into December. Szczepanik noted that even the 2004 Saratoga runners had run below par at their final appearance at the Footlocker championship, and he ascribed to a fellow coach's theory that teams had only four spread-out races a season -- the Four Aces -- when they could give their maximum. Hilton had already played two of its aces, and with three more big meets following in the three weekends after States, a 5-deep team like Hilton did not have enough cards left to play if it accepted the Federation invite.

The question was though, if Hilton did not run at Feds, would the team be burning it's chance to be selected for the Nike Team Nationals meet, because there was yet no qualifying meet established to determine the entries from the country's eight regions? The Nike selection committee reviewed each applicant's credentials and decided which teams from a region like the Northeast were the strongest. Szczepanik strongly believed that his team had the second best resume after Saratoga and deserved to go to Nationals. When he learned after an enquiry to Nike that an absence from Feds would not hurt his chances for a ticket to Portland Meadows, he made his decision. Hilton was staying home to prepare the top five runners for the Footlocker regional qualifiers the weekend after Feds, and then he was gambling that Nike would take the Cadets for NTN. It was a tough decision that stirred up a lot of controversy in a tradition-bound state, but Szczepanik was at peace with the move. And it paid off, as on the day after Feds the NTN selectors decided that Saratoga and Hilton deserved bids for the Northeast along with Roxbury from NJ. Hilton was going west on an all-expenses paid trip to grab some glory.

The weekend of the skipped Feds had another huge piece of news. Shannon Griggs and the SUNY-Geneseo team had gone west to the Ohio Wesleyan host site and bagged a national championship, defeating reigning champ Williams by an 88-107 score. Shannon had finished 16th overall and 3rd among the SUNY-Geneseo runners to cap her comeback from the limping dead. Her biggest fan and sister had had been a constant phone companion the last three years as they nursed each other through long injury timeouts. "I wanted so much for both us to be happy," said Amanda. Now one sister could be very pleased that the hard work had helped earn a national championship, and the second was hoping for the same returns.

But first there was a race to be run back at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx for a chance to earn a spot at Footlocker Nationals, though this time running the 5K course. Griggs, Schultz, Sawyer, Herman, and Jones were all giving it a shot for Hilton in the Seeded girls race and Calleen Childs was in the Senior race. Saratoga's girls had swamped the competition the previous week at the Federation meet, and now Hannah Davidson and Lindsey Ferguson were looking to add more to their plates with Footlocker berths. Ex-teammates Nicole Blood and Caitlin Lane were also in the hunt. For Hilton's Griggs the decision to run carried some risk as she did not want to risk aggravating her shin, but she needed to know how well she could still motor.