East Hampton's Dylan Cashin Qualifies for Cross Country State Meet

Dylan Cashin is heading back to the New York State Cross Country Championships.

The junior placed sixth overall in 20:31.26 in the Suffolk County Class B race at the Section XI Championships, also known as the state qualifier, at Sunken Meadow State Park in Kings Park on Friday. With Sayville winning the county title and its individual runners out of the equation, the next five runners not from Sayville qualify for states. Cashin nabbed the fifth and final spot.

It was a long time coming for Cashin who, along with the entire East Hampton girls team qualified for the state meet when it won the county title back in 2019, when she was a eighth-grader. The COVID-19 pandemic completely wiped out the 2020 season, leading to a shortened cross country season in spring 2021. In that season, Cashin placed third in the county and would have qualified for states easily, but all state meets were still canceled. Then, last season, the first full season back following the pandemic, Cashin finished just two spots out of qualifying.

“I’m so happy,” a beaming Cashin said not long after finishing the race. “My eighth-grade year we went as a team, which was the best thing ever. I made it the following year, but COVID had canceled states. Last year, I just missed. So I’m just super happy.”

East Hampton girls cross country head coach Diane O’Donnell said she and Cashin had a plan in place that she stuck to throughout the race. Mount Sinai seventh-grader Cali Gabrielson finished fourth overall in the race, which surprised just about everyone, but Cashin was still able to grab one of the last spots and now she’ll compete at the state meet which is at Vernon Verona Sherrill High School, just east of Syracuse, this Saturday.

“She knew coming into this season she had her work cut out for her,” O’Donnell said. “Every year there’s always a few new faces that you don’t know about, as well as the old competition that’s still there. Elwood-John Glenn senior Emily LaMena has gone every year that she could, so we knew she would go. We knew the Mount Sinai girl [junior Paige Sheiffele] would go. The surprise was the second Mount Sinai girl. She’s a seventh-grader, not even on our radar, so it came down to Dylan and the next girl, Westhampton girl [Caeden Dorn], whom she knew she had to beat for that fifth spot, and she did. She knew exactly what she had to do and who she needed to run against. She’s been focusing on this race for the season.”

East Hampton junior Ryleigh O’Donnell finished the race in a personal best 22:12.32, which placed her 18th overall in the county.

Cashin will be looking to finish in the top 24 at states this weekend to earn All-State honors. Coach O’Donnell seemed to think Cashin has the potential to do that.

“Class B is so competitive upstate,” Cashin said, “but our county is amazing as well. “I’m just happy I’m going at this point. I’m going to give it everything that I have, but I am just happy to get there.”

East Hampton’s boys team ran on the same day in what was billed as one of the most competitive races in the county since a handful of the seven teams competing could have won the county title, including the Bonackers. But it wasn’t their day.

Diego Rojas, a junior, was the first Bonacker to cross the finish line in 18:42.97, which placed him 22nd overall. Freshman Liam Knight came in next at 18:55.23, which placed him 26th.

Harborfields wound up winning the race with 54 points, 13 points ahead of second place Miller Place, even though it only had two finishers in the top 12.

“It was weird. There were the two different types of teams,” East Hampton head coach Kevin Barry explained. “You had the teams that had the kind of frontrunner kids, but they didn’t have the depth. Teams like Kings Park, Miller Place and us being the third, we don’t have frontrunners, we just run as a pack and as a team. We packed it as well as we could have, but it was a good for Harborfields to win. They haven’t won in so long.”

Barry thought his runners ran well. They were missing a few of their usual runners, but even so they didn’t have any seniors on the starting line which bodes well for the future. He was particularly impressed with Rojas, who really turned things on in the final meets of the season.

“He was probably our most improved runner,” Barry said. “He just came out last year. He’s just a workhorse, he really is. Then we had another freshman, Juan Torres, and it was his first time that he ran Cardiac [Hill], so another workhorse who finished and ran well. They all got good experience and it was a good meet overall for us.”