“What do you want to get out of this race?”
That was the question Cambridge Rindge and Latin School boys’ cross-country coach Ian Woodhouse posed to his runners at the beginning of Tuesday afternoon’s practice, just four days before the state’s top-ranked team will compete for a Division 1A championship. The team didn’t need to answer. They all have the same goal: bring a state championship back to Cambridge for the first time since 1991.
“You have the opportunity to go out and chase it,” Woodhouse said. “That’s pretty cool.”
For senior Leon Ibañez Fraile, the team’s top runner, a championship win would represent the culmination of years of effort and discipline. “After four years of putting so much time and energy into the team, and the people I spend time around, for us to come away with such a big accomplishment would be awesome,” Ibañez Fraile said.
Led by an experienced group of seniors and a pair of standout underclassmen, the Falcons have spent the season as Massachusetts’ top-ranked boys’ cross-country team. They’re undefeated and won both the Catholic Memorial Invitational on Oct. 17 and the Dual County League championship. But they have yet to face four-time defending champion Brookline High.
For the Falcons, the competition doesn’t stop when practice begins. After years of running alongside one another, the teammates have developed a friendly rivalry that pushes them to improve.
The team’s top runner is Ibañez Fraile, who has won every meet he’s competed in this fall for the 5-0 Falcons. But success in cross country depends on more than individual performance. Each varsity team fields seven runners, with its top five finishers earning points based on their finish: one point for first place, two for second and so on. The team with the lowest combined score wins.
Woodhouse and his runners say their success is built on a culture of friendship, competition and mutual accountability that has pushed the entire team to new heights.
“In the workouts, you’re trying to beat them,” said Declan Lewis, a senior co-captain. “While you also try to run alongside them.”
Better together
Woodhouse credits much of that competitive culture to the team’s seniors, who have taken responsibility for making sure their younger teammates show up to practice, get enough sleep and take their training seriously.
Sophomore Thomas DeWitt, typically the team’s second-fastest runner behind Ibañez Fraile, said he doesn’t consider his teammate a rival.
“We train together all the time,” DeWitt said. “We’re kind of like best friends, to be honest. It’s kind of quite the opposite of rivals.”
That camaraderie was on display at the Dual County League championship Oct. 30, when junior Gael Berzin passed DeWitt in the final kilometer of the 5-kilometer race to finish third, his highest placement ever. It was the first time he had beaten DeWitt at that distance.
“I felt very proud of myself because Thomas is obviously a really amazing runner,” Berzin said.
Woodhouse said the runners Berzin beat were among the happiest to see him succeed.
Rain delays, not rest days
What bumps the Falcons have faced so far this season have primarily been weather related. Two major invitationals were canceled by severe storms, including the Oct. 11 Twilight meet on Cape Cod, where the team had already arrived before organizers called off the competition. During the long bus ride home through the pouring rain, Woodhouse proposed holding a workout the following morning, although he had told the runners they could take the holiday off.
“They were basically like, ‘No, no, no! Like, we want, we really want to do that.’ Like, ‘we will be there,’” Woodhouse recalled.
The following weekend, the Falcons won the Catholic Memorial Invitational at Franklin Park, besting a field that included strong Massachusetts teams and two of New Hampshire’s top programs, Pinkerton Academy and Coe-Brown Northwood Academy.
“It felt like we had all this pent-up energy from not having gotten in a big race,” Woodhouse said. “That was a nice confidence boost for them.”
Unfinished business
Woodhouse, 30, has been coaching the team since 2019, a homecoming for him. He ran cross country at CRLS, graduating in 2015. In 2014, he was part of a team ranked among the state’s best, only to lose the divisional championship by a single point and the All-State championship by seven.
That experience taught him not to put too much stock in rankings. “I tell them, like, we don’t really pay attention to the rankings,” Woodhouse said. “I pay attention to them. I’m allowed to look at them. The kids are not.”
The team runs against Brookline for the first time at the Division 1A championship at Fort Devens Saturday. Both will be expected to advance to the season-ending Division 1 Meet of Champions on Nov. 21.
Brookline is 9-0 and ranked no. 2. But Woodhouse said his team’s erratic schedule this season may give Brookline an edge. He also cautioned against overlooking other top contenders, including Lexington and North Andover. There’s also third-ranked Concord-Carlisle, though CRLS beat it handily in a tri-meet.
“You’ve got to run the race for a reason,” Woodhouse said. “It’d be nice if we could just put all the times down and be like, ‘Hey, look, on paper we’re number one. We can take the trophy.’ But no.”
His runners, however, aren’t lacking in confidence.
“I think we’ve proven that we’re beyond capable of clearing that hurdle (Brookline) throughout the entirety of the season,” said Ibañez Fraile. “If all of us get on that line and have a normal race … there’s zero chance they beat us.”
A stronger
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