Manhattan Boys
- 2 days ago
- 7 min read
Next up are the Manhattan boys. This decade seven different Manhattan programs have recorded a top ten finish at the City Championship and a total of nine different schools have qualified. However, the last Manhattan boys program to win it all was Stuyvesant in 2016. Other than Stuyvesant, the last Manhattan program to win it all was Brandeis HS in 1965. Historically, Manhattan hasn’t been the best borough, but the 2020s have been a different story. Participation has also been strong this decade, with 17 of the 19 teams having competed in the Borough Championship at least once. And one of the two teams that hasn’t just had its first season in 2025.
Borough Champions
2021 - Hunter College Campus
2022 - Stuyvesant
2023 - Hunter College Campus
2024 - Stuyvesant
2025 - Stuyvesant
Individual Champions
2021 - Lucien Louvet - Beacon - 17:11
2022 - Shane Murphy - Hunter College Campus - 17:13
2023 - Henry Koike-Sieira - Hunter College Campus - 16:10
2024 - Raphael Ramot - Stuyvesant - 17:26
2025 - Ezekiel Cohen - LaGuardia - 16:34
Top Ten Finishes at City Championship
1. Shane Murphy - Hunter College Campus (2023)
2. Henry Koike-Sieira - Hunter College Campus (2023)
2. Henry Koike-Sieira - Hunter College Campus (2022)
3. Shane Murphy - Hunter College Campus (2022)
3. Ezekiel Cohen - LaGuardia (2025)
5. Isaac Cohen - Hunter College Campus (2023)
5. Alexander Brown - Beacon (2021)
7. Liam O’Neill - Manhattan Center (2023)
7. Robert Pures - Hunter College Campus (2021)
8. Shane Murphy - Hunter College Campus (2021)
9. Lucas McGarvey - Stuyvesant (2022)
10. Lucas McGarvey - Stuyvesant (2023)
10. Raphael Ramot - Stuyvesant (2025)
10. Raphael Ramot - Stuyvesant (2024)
The PSAL website lists 19 boys programs on the PSAL’s website. We’ll rank their performance since the Pandemic in reverse order.
18. (TIED)
Murry Bergtraum
Gregorio Luperion High School - first season with a team was 2025
Neither of these programs have competed in the Manhattan Borough Championships in the 2020s.
17. Community Health Academy
They’ve made only one appearance at Manhattan Borough Championships this decade, finishing last in 2021. However, they’ve had athletes compete each year, with their top time of 24:57 run in 2024 by Leynin Aquiles.
16. High School of Economics and Finance
They made their decade debut at Borough Championships this past fall season, finishing 12th of 13 teams in Manhattan. Mathew Cedillo was their top runner this past season, running 19:50.
15. High School for Environmental Studies
HSES has competed in the last four Manhattan championships and have beaten a total of three teams over that span, with a top finish of 9th in 2024. Adil Dzudza holds their decade-best time of 21:57, also in 2024.
14. Pace High School
Pace’s only appearance at Boroughs was in 2021 when they finished 9th. Jakobi Brown ran 20:30 in 2025 to set their half-decade standard.
13. Martin Luther King Jr. High School
This program obviously missed out when Nate Boutin transferred to John Jay after his freshman year. But they’ve struggled despite having the largest amount of boys to choose from besides Stuyvesant. They’ve only competed twice at Boroughs this decade, finishing 10th both times. Oshio Isekenegbe is their only runner to break 20 minutes this decade, running 19:45 in 2023.
12. Columbia Secondary School
Columbia has appeared in 3 of the 5 Borough Championships this decade. Their best finish was 8th in 2025. Their top runner this past season, Aden Thom ran a decade-best time of 17:49 and qualified for the Federation Meet as an individual. However, he graduated so they’ll have to build around other runners.
11. The Clinton School
The Clinton School has run the past two Manhattan Borough Championships, finishing last in 2024 and 10th in 2025. This is a program that is still building and their top runner this decade is Theo Trane, who ran 19:05 this past season as a sophomore. This is one of the few schools that also has a middle school program that could act as a feeder program if the students opt to stay at the school for high school.
10. West End Secondary School
New to the PSAL, but not a new program, WESS finished 7th at Boroughs in 2025, narrowly missing qualifying for Cities. Leo Lussier is their fastest runner this decade, running 18:02 this past season. Although he graduated, this is a large enough team that we expect increasing success for the remainder of the decade.
9. Chelsea Career and Technical
Their top Borough finish was 7th in 2022. Chelsea made their only appearance at Cities in 2023, finishing 21st. It was largely due to the efforts of their top runner, Forrest Mele-Kean, who ran 16:53 and finished 14th to qualify for the Federation Meet. Only The Clinton School has fewer boys to choose from, so it’ll always be difficult to build a program for Chelsea.
8. Lab Museum United
LMU has fielded a team at Manhattan Borough Championships every year this decade, finishing 6th in both 2024 and 2025. Although they narrowly missed qualifying for Cities in 2024 and 2025 after finishing 25th in 2023, their consistency in fielding a team shows that there’s a program building here. Their top two runners are under 18 minutes and just sophomores. Marco Arrojo, their top runner, ran 17:39 this past season to qualify for the Federation Meet, likely making him the first Lab Museum runner to do so.
7. Beacon High School
Beacon finished 3rd at Boroughs in 2021, but have not finished higher 7th since then, including a 9th place finish last season. They’ve qualified for Cities twice this decade, finishing 8th in 2021 and 14th in 2023. Alexander Brown ran 17:04 in 2021 to qualify for the Federation meet. Beacon has around 500 boys to choose from and competes in all three seasons, so they’re probably just working through a downturn in talent and are likely to rebound soon.
6. Manhattan Center for Science and Math
Manhattan Center have competed in each of the Borough Championships this decade and started off well, but have seen their talent thin out over the past few years. Their best team this decade was the 2023 team, led by Liam O’Neill running 16:28 at Cities, where they finished 6th. That team finished a half-decade best 3rd at the Borough Championship. They have the 3rd most boys to choose from in Manhattan, so it shouldn’t be too long before they climb back up the Borough standings.
5. LaGuardia High School
The LaGuardia boys had their highest City Championship finish of the decade in 2025. They finished 9th thanks in large part to a 3rd place finish by Ezekiel Cohen, who ran 16:34 and went on to earn All-State honors at the Federation meet. It was the 3rd straight year they qualified for the City Championship race. And they probably could have finished higher, but Nicholas Watson, who ran 18:00 as a freshman, either moved away or quit the team. He hasn’t been on their roster since. In 2025, they also had their highest Borough finish ever, finishing 2nd behind Stuyvesant. Unfortunately for them, they were the 5th Manhattan team to finish at Cities.
4. Bard High School
Bard High School does have the 2nd fewest amount of boys in Manhattan, but when combined with NEST+M, that number rises significantly. They’ve qualified for the City Championship each year of this decade, finishing in the top ten in 2024 and 2025. However, their top three finishers from 2025 have graduated, so we’ll see how they rebuild toward the end of the decade. They’ve also established themselves as one of the top programs in the borough, with four top-5 finishes this decade. Their top runner this decade is Ramsey Hansen, who ran 16:46 at Bowdoin in 2025.
3. High School for Math, Science and Engineering
Their 5th place finish at Manhattan Boroughs was their worst finish of the decade thus far. And despite that, they still rebounded to finish 6th in the City for the 4th time in the last 5 years. They’ve been very close to taking that next step as a program, winning a borough championship or qualifying for the Federation meet, but they’ve fallen just short a few times, most recently finishing 2nd at the 2024 Borough Championship. Wren Hansen ran 17:02 last season to lead their program this decade.
2. Hunter College Campus High School
No program came back from the Pandemic loaded with more talent than Hunter. At the 2023 City Championship, they placed three boys in the top five, but still couldn’t get past Tech. At Feds that year they finished 4th overall, the 2nd best finish in PSAL history (Tech was 2nd that same year). While they have fewer than 400 boys to choose from, they also have the advantage of coaching their athletes from 7th grade, so by the time they get to 9th and 10th grade, they’re often more polished than other runners from around the city. The result is that they have not finished lower than 7th place at Cities this decade. Shane Murphy and Henry Koike-Sieira hold 2 of the top 3 PSAL times at Bowdoin and 2 of the top 8 PSAL times at VCP. Unfortunately, for the Hawks, 6 of the 7 boys who ran on the 2023 team never ran in another City Championship.
1. Stuyvesant High School
Although the Stuyvesant boys haven’t finished higher than 3rd at Cities this decade, they also have not finished lower than 4th, therefore qualifying for the Federation Meet every year since the Pandemic. The only other boys program that can make that claim is Brooklyn Tech. In fact, like Hunter, they ran into some bad luck in 2023. Their 5-man average of 17:07 from that championship was faster than all but one PSAL boys team up to that point this century, but was only good for 3rd place on that fall day. Today, it’s still tied for 6th fastest 5-man average this century. They do have an obvious advantage over the rest of the boys programs in Manhattan in that they have nearly 1,000 more boys to choose from than any other boys program in the borough. 2026 Grad Raphael Ramot ran 16:42 this past Fall to lead them.
Manhattan Boys All Half-Decade Team
Forrest Mele Kean (Chelsea Career and Technical)
Robert Pures (Hunter College Campus)
Lucas McGarvey (Stuyvesant)
Raphael Ramot (Stuyvesant)
Liam O’Neill (Manhattan Center)
Alexander Brown (Beacon)
Isaac Cohen (Hunter College Campus)
Ezekiel Cohen (LaGuardia)
Henry Koike-Sieira (Hunter College Campus)
Shane Murphy (Hunter College Campus)
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