Shady Side Academy girls cross country team ready to put in hard work
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Saturday, August 23, 2025 | 11:01 AM
Shady Side Academy’s Marcelle Minutolo runs at the start of the Class A race at the 2024 WPIAL championships at White Oak Park.
Shady Side Academy girls cross country coach Jeff Perlis always wants to see his athletes excel in the psychology of races. During a cross country race, Perlis believes it is possible to prepare for nearly all of the scenarios the athletes will run into.
“This is the mentality I try to instill from Day 1: We do hard things,” Perlis said. “This isn’t easy. Races aren’t easy. Cross country is one of the most predictable sports out there. We know how a 5K race is going to go, we know how fast we need to go and it’s going to hurt. Because of that predictability, we can train a lot of those scenarios.”
The Bulldogs will return two state qualifiers from last season, Marcelle Minutolo and Nola Vadnais. Minutolo, a freshman, ran a time of 22 minutes, 45 seconds and finished 115th at states. Vadnais finished in 24:06.
“They lead by example every day,” Perlis said. “We have some girls that are newer. We have 10 freshmen on the team, maybe 11. They look up to those girls every day to lead by example. Once the racing gets going, it’s competitive.”
Shady Side Academy will have plenty of competition. The girls team has 30 athletes out this season.
Rhyley Bendel, Ella Van Norman and Charlotte Barker were all state qualifiers during the outdoor track season last spring. Perlis said that Barker and Van Norman both ran cross country in middle school.
“The 5K distance does prepare its own fair share of challenges,” Perlis said. “We talk a lot about the various mental states you go in a given 5K and working through each of those. My message has been that we can respond to them instead of react.”
Perlis said he has been happy with the progress the runners have made over the summer. He is excited with the growth.
“I can’t stop counting down the days until the meets,” Perlis said. “I am excited by the group we have. We’ve been meeting over the summer and getting the ball rolling there. The girls have been running hard.”
Tags: Shady Side Academy
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