Abby Chestovich is an eighth-grader at Holy Spirit on the Cretin-Derham Hall cross country team. Until last year, Abby had no running experience, so running for a high school team and making it to state is an impressive feat. The CDH team had five varsity runners including Adam Sewich ’22, Andy Chestovich ’22, Jack Mountain ’22, Liam Mclay ’24, and eighth-grader Abby Chestovich. She was able to join the CDH cross country team because Holy Spirit does not have its own. This is her second year running for CDH, and she is already the fastest girl on the squad. Chestovich was the only girl on varsity this year. Despite the limited number of runners, she is still pushing herself to be the best she can be. Her older brother Andy Chestovich is a captain of the team. 

“My family has always been a running family, so it’s no wonder that Abby is as good as she is,” said Andy Chestovich. “If she starts training, she could be one of the best runners in the state. I am very excited to see where she can go with her times.”

Abby Chestovich’s race is the 5k, equivalent to 3.1 miles. Her favorite part of cross country is racing in the meets. She loves the intensity of the sport. 

“My goal was to run under 21 minutes and 25 seconds for a 5k,” said Chestovich. 

Her fastest 5k time last year was 22 minutes 33 seconds. To make her goal, she needed to run 36 seconds faster on every mile. Abby went further than anyone could have expected, making it all the way to state and finishing off her season with a time of 20 minutes 39 seconds, completely blowing her goal out of the water. She ran a total of 1 minute 10 seconds faster than her best time on every mile and 34 seconds faster on every mile than she needed to reach her goal. Pulling off these amazing feats as an eighth-grader proves that anything can happen if you put your mind to it.

“With everyone being older than me, I get to feel like the only place for me to go is up,” she said. “I can’t wait for next season to see where I can go with my time and place.”