With the first month of school complete, this year’s fall sports are in full force. Every team is gearing up to compete, and cross country is no exception. Mr. Arnold is one of many coaches in the high school who works to prepare athletes for the demanding challenges they will face. 

For as long as he can remember, Arnold has been running, participating in informal events throughout grade school. He began doing cross country in the fall for his high school as freshman, as well as running during spring track. 

Now entering his fifteenth year of coaching, Arnold has spent ten of them with New Providence. He has fallen in love with many aspects of the sport and claimed: “the best part is working with the runners and seeing their progression throughout the year.”

Arnold emphasizes the idea of taking risks and how it is important for runners to improve. Coming up with strategies for pacing and how to approach parts of races is something he is extremely passionate about.

He said: “I like the idea of putting together a plan, executing it and then evaluating it.”

To follow their strategy, runners are required to remain focused throughout the race. Current junior Ava Cumiskey said she always tries to stick to a plan: “I try to stay conservative at the beginning of a race and speed up towards the end.”

Runners in New Providence know that Arnold finds it important to challenge his teams, and he will encourage runners to push themselves to their limits.

“You don’t want to finish a race regretting that you didn’t try your best,” he said.

NPHS runners agree that Arnold and the other coaches have been working them more as the season progresses.

“They make sure I push myself to the limit and make it difficult. Switching up the training every day sets me up to improve as well as make our team successful and confident,” Cumiskey said.

Every member is expected to give maximum effort during races, even when it becomes uncomfortable. Junior A.J. Boyle understands that he is part of a team that is counting on him to compete.

“My mentality while racing is that I am one in a larger force, that I must put forth all my effort because my teammates are doing so as well, and I can’t let them down,” he said.

The teams have been working toward goals for competitions and give their best efforts during their practices.

“The coaches have pushed me to improve with their continual reminders of why we run. They guide us to make sure we make the most of the time we have,” Boyle said.

Arnold takes pride in the cross country program and wants to continue the success by using his methods of coaching on new groups of runners: “New Providence has a long history and I like to think we’ve built and maintained a reputation of good running and quality teams.”

This year Arnold’s goal for the boys is to win the conference, and go from there. Teams such as Metuchen, Dayton, and Highland Park will make sectionals for them very difficult, but Arnold wants New Providence to be competitive. He said: “If another team beats us, we want them to have earned it. They shouldn’t be able to show up and win without a fight.”

Arnold hopes that the boys team will continue to run hard later in the year and have a chance to keep advancing to the group championships. He is so far happy with their performance and said: “we’ve gone through a couple of cycles of building up the intensity and the teams have really handled that well.”

As for the girls, Arnold is impressed with what they have accomplished so far: “they have a fantastic pack of very competitive runners. We have one senior leader with Hannah Ocello who’s done a great job over the years. And our younger roles are just very competitive and are getting more experience.” 

He wants to go one step at a time, but believes the girls could become one of the top teams in the state this year. The team is set on becoming faster and getting personal records to contribute to the success.

Cumiskey said: “our goal is to win the group one sectional and even a state title.”