In cross-country in New Hampshire, the big day for meeting individual goals, for running great times and showing where you stand in the state, is the Meet of Champions. The big day for team achievement is the Division championships at a rain-soaked Derryfield Park.
The event took place in Manchester this Saturday, Oct. 29, and for local teams, the singular goal was team success.
“Well you want to win,” Mike Smith, long time Mascenic head coach, said. “That’s always the plan here.”
Of local schools, the Mascenic boys placed highest, finishing third in the boys’ Division III race, which was won by Monadnock High School. Kearsarge placed second.
A Monadnock runner, James Elmour, took the Division III individual race as well, but his biggest challenge came from Mascenic’s Jake Movsessian.
“I knew I needed to get Elmour at some point early on,” he said.
Movsessian went out with the lead pack, running a fast first mile on the already challenging five kilometer course. He lead with a little over a quarter-mile to go, before finishing fourth in 16:54.
“He knows as well as anybody, if you come in fourth at least you went for it,” Smith said. “We’ve been running pretty hard still and he’ll be ready to run fast next week [at Meet of Champions].”
Mascenic’s girls finished seventh behind a very strong top three of Samantha Bilodeau (third, 20:28), Madison Labrie (eighth, 20:48) and Sam Hughson (15th, 21:14).
“I wasn’t nervous for this race at all,” Bilodeau said. “I was just excited.”
She said her goal was to finish in the top five, which she did, and she sang praises for her teammates, especially Hughson, a freshman who had probably the best race of her career.
Those three have qualified for Meet of Champions. Rounding out the scoring was Shelby Babin (68th, 24:10) and Sophie Callahan (96th, 25:30). None of Mascenic’s girls’ varsity were seniors, so look out for them next year.
The boys’ team, finishing third, has qualified to advance to MOC. After Movsessian, its scorers were DJ Turner (15th, 17:21), Dakota Somero (34th, 18:08), Michael Fappiano-Putre (43rd, 18:31) and Logan Thibault (44th, 18:37).
Also in the Division III races was Conant. Neither the boys nor the girls finished in the top 5 teams to qualify for MOC, but some individuals did.
On the girls’ team, which finished ninth, Isabella Mormando (10th, 20:50) and Claire Van Houten (22nd, 21:39) did so by placing in the top 25. The remaining Orioles’s scorers were Lily Bennett (31st, 22:19), Bailey Despres (83rd, 24:52) and Julia Aho (92nd, 25:09).
Scorers on Conant’s 13th-place boys team were Tim Luhtjarv (38th, 18:16), Caleb Olson (40th, 18:21), Chris Taylor (75th, 19:22), Benjamin Pyhala (86th, 19:31) and Seth Mann (90th, 19:44).
The Division II race saw ConVal’s teams finish strong, but behind historically dominant wins by the Coe-Brown boys and Souhegan girls.
In the girls’ race, ConVal’s Lady Cougars earned a trip to MOC by placing fifth with a tightly packed attack that saw the top three runners separated by less than ten seconds.
Clare Veverka led the team as she has all year, but this time with teammates much closer behind than usual. She was 24th in 20:50, followed by Schuyler Michalak (25th, 20:54) and Lucy Freeman (27th, 20:59). The remaining two scorers were Sawyer Cawthern (35th, 21:17) and Hailey Doherty (66th, 22:20).
Michalak said the achievement was a team effort.
“It was really awesome, and next week we’ll do our best,” she said.
The boys team, which finished seventh, finishes its season without making MOC for the eighth-straight year.
Scoring cougars were Evan Coyne (28th, 17:35), Ben Henry (43rd, 17:49), Liam Veverka (64th, 18:31), Max Boisvert (65th, 18:32) and Oliver Ellerkamp (67th, 18:34).
Wilton-Lyndeborough Cooperative High School’s lone runner was Ben Ducharme, a senior, who placed 57th in the Division III race in a time of 19:02.
Next week, qualifying athletes will compete in the Meet of Champions in Mine Falls Park in Nashua. MOC comprises of runners from all three divisions to see how one could place in a full, state-wide meet.
The individual favorites will be Patrick O’Brien of Oyster River and Jacqueline Goughan of Exeter, who broke the Derryfield course record Saturday by 22 seconds as a junior.
Mascenic’s Bilodeau ran the 55th best time overall among girls at the division meet, and Movsessian was 27th among boys. The top 25 from MOC will advance to the New England Championship.