2003 SPF Boys Cross Country Review

Injuries and inexperience took their toll on the Scotch Plains Boys Cross Country team which despite consistently outstanding individual performances by Brian Kopnicki
fell short of many of its team goals. Kopnicki along with fellow senior Zack McGuire were the only returning lettermen and led the squad throughout the season but team success is predicated on having five finishers and despite a 9-1 dual meet record the Raiders were not competitive with Cranford in the larger end of the year meets.

“It's always very difficult having to deal with not being as good as you were the year before,” said coach Jeff Koegel now 59-7 in seven seasons.
“ It would have been nice to see what we could have done had we not been hit so hard with injuries,” added Koegel.

The biggest loss was junior Sean Smith, who had run a 50.7 second 400-meter relay leg last spring and was going to be running cross country for the first time.
“ He was training very hard over the summer and definitely would have run in our top five. It appears that the lingering shin injuries he struggled with this spring never healed properly, and the distance training caused them to develop into a stress fracture. He was lost for the season,” said Koegel.

Another top runner sophomore Josh Zinman, who ran 10:24 for 3200 as a freshman last spring, suffered the same injury right before the championship season started.
“He was our third runner. Being without two of your top five runners is extremely difficult. It's even more difficult when you only have about a dozen boys on the team and you don't have the depth to replace them. I guess we can look on the bright side of still coming in second in the conference and qualifying for the group meet without them, but that's not an easy thing to do, “ said Koegel.

Koegel was also pleased with the way some of his less experienced runners developed. Freshman Mike Miller ran some of the best freshman times in Koegel’s career and sophomores Brian Glassett and Matt Capodicasa also progressed quite a bit over the course of the season, both running low-18's after never having broken 19:00 coming into this season.


“We need to get more people out for the team. Scotch Plains and Fanwood are soccer towns, which doesn't help us much, and we also lack a middle school program, “ said Koegel.

“ I don't care if they're not very good when they come out. If they're willing to work, I will make them better. Some of my best runners were the slowest guys on the team when they first started.”

Amazingly enough one of those slow runners at one time was Kopnicki who struggled to break 24 minutes for the 5K his first season. His impressive list of accomplishments this season ranks with the greats of tradition rich Scotch Plains. Kopnicki rolled to championships in the Watchung Conference and Union county meets and was named county runner of the year by the Courier News and the Star Ledger.

Kopnicki considered one of few non winning efforts, a fourth place finish in 16:24.67 in the Group 3 state meet at Holmdel, as his best effort of the year. The time was the second fastest by a Raider runner during Koegel’s tenure and the third best in school history behind Bob Wallden ( 2001) and Pete Clavin (1991).

Koegel was most proud of the way that Kopnicki bounced back from a second place finish at the sectionals and defeated the same runner at the following two meets, the State Finals and the Meet of Champions.

“I came into that race just trying to get under 16:40 and I ended up doing a lot better then I thought I could do ,” said Kopnicki.

Kopnicki gives much of the credit to Koegel. “Having a good coach who knows what he is doing is great. A lot of the times XC coaches don't get enough credit for what they do because all they do is tell you to "run" but it's a lot more than that, “ said Kopnicki.