Girls turn in best performance ever
BELFAST, Maine — The Caribou Vikings’ dominance at the Northern Maine cross country regionals continued Saturday.
Coach Roy Alden’s boys team picked up another impressive victory, its third consecutive regional title and seventh since 2008.
The tradition-laden boys cross country program from Caribou has produced some of the finest runners to traverse Maine’s trails over the years. While this year’s edition of the Vikings doesn’t possess the frontrunner who can take control of a race, Alden is fortunate to have a lot of pack power.
That turned out to be the recipe for championship success at Troy Howard Middle School on Saturday, as four Vikings placed in the top 20 and all five scorers in the top 30 en route to their second consecutive Northern Maine Class B championship.
“Gradually all year, they’ve moved up as a group,” Alden said after his Vikings accumulated 71 points to finish well ahead of runner-up John Bapst of Bangor (118). “We’ve had two kids running in front and then we’ve had three others that kept moving up together.”
The top eight teams in Class B moved on to next weekend’s state championship meet, also in Belfast. So that means Mount Desert Island (120), Erskine Academy of South China (125), Camden Hills of Rockport (127), Waterville (136), Ellsworth (163) and Presque Isle (186) will join the Vikings and Crusaders next weekend.
Caribou’s lead man, Evan Desmond, recorded a fourth-place finish in 17 minutes and 37.76 seconds, but it was the 12-13-14 effort of Kyle Boucher (17:59.42), Alec Cyr (17:59.54) and Dylan Marrero (18:01.51) that enabled the Vikings to distance themselves from the pack.
Bryce Coffin rounded out Caribou’s scoring runners in 28th place with a time of 18:25.03.
“Evan ran an extremely smart race, showing a lot of courage running with the leaders the first half. Kyle and Alec had outstanding second miles allow them the opportunity to pick up spots the last 600 yards and Dylan and Bryce also ran extremely well,” Alden said.
“I felt like if we worked hard and everybody did their jobs, we’d be in good shape,” he added.
The Vikings certainly weren’t rattled last week after learning the meet had been postponed due to inclement weather.
“We did two extra long runs, then went through our pre-race routine the way we’ve done it in the past,” Alden said. “I tried to mix in some fun things, and not focus on the meet very much until the end of the week.”
Alden expects Greely, Freeport and Lincoln Academy to be the strongest teams coming out of the south.
“The same focus and sense of purpose must possess each of the seven young men that will be running in the meet,” Alden said. “It will take an outstanding team effort, but we will need to continue to have the courage it takes to race with the top 20 runners in Class B and reduce our pack time another 5 to 10 seconds.”
The Caribou girls team may not have won a title, but coach Thomas Beckum thinks it was the Vikings’ best race at regionals in school history.
Caribou placed third by having five runners in the top 23 and qualified as a team for this Saturday’s state meet.
“In any other year, we would have won with those placings. We broke the school record of five girls running under 22 minutes at the Belfast course and our sixth runner was 22:01. We have been chasing this record for some time now,” Beckum said.
The Vikes’ total of 80 points was behind only Mount Desert Island (57) and Camden Hills (73).
Freshman Katrina Salch ran a 40-second personal best at 20:53 to take 10th overall. Simone Michaud broke her previous personal record by one minute and was 12th in 21:03.4.
Ashley Violette was 15th (21:25.48), Madeline Gudde 22nd (21:50.16) and Sarae Greenier 23rd (21:50.65) as the team’s other scorers, while Emma Belyea (26th) and Emily Austin (31st) backed them up with fine efforts.
“I believe having the regional meet pushed back a week helped us to recover from racing every weekend and bounce back for peak performance,” Beckum said. “We had a shot of winning the [Northern Maine] title and we went for it. This team has done a good job running together and pushing each other as our five-girl gap was 47 seconds.
“The state meet is going to be a lot more competitive, but anything is possible and if we run like we did Saturday we might have a chance to do something special again,” he added.
The LCS/MSSM girls have also qualified for the states by placing third in Class C. Coach Kirk Cote said it may be the Eagles’ highest placement at a regional in school history.
“It was a much enjoyable surprise,” Cote said. “Having the five girls grouped within nearly three minutes of each other and having four girls in the top 34 was really nice.”
Freshman Hannah Nelson led the way for the Eagles by placing 19th in 22:17.92 and junior Naomi Kihn was right behind at 22:35.88. Allison Johnson was 28th in 23:01.02 and Bailey Chalmers was 34th in 24:03.27. Charlotte McCulloh was the squad’s other scorer, placing 43rd in 25:22.91.
George Stevens Academy edged out Orono for the top spot in the C race, 35-36.
The LCS/MSSM boys placed seventh as a team, one slot out of being the final team qualifying. James Cyr was 14th in 18:20.42 and was the only Eagle boys to make it into the state championship field, which requires a top-30 performance.
For Washburn, junior Devon Maynard and sophomore Kassie Farley continued their string of qualifying every year they’ve competed. Maynard was 21st in the C boys race in 18:50 and Farley 14th among girls in 21:49.
Bangor Daily News sports reporter Ryan McLaughlin contributed to this story.
