The league meet is the conclusion and culmination of the league season. After this, there are the big meets, but the teams are scattered across the different divisions and don't necessarily face each other any more. And in the really big meets like the EMass Divisional championships, no team can afford to focus on any single rival. All of this means that the league meet is a unique occasion to look back and look forward, to assess the teams relative to previous years, and to speculate on what next year's league will look like.
On Saturday, we saw Jess Barton run like the defending state champion she is. Running against Wellesley's Brielle Chabot (who had beaten Barton by 53 seconds at Walpole), Barton took the lead at the start and refused to let the race get tactical. Chabot is nothing if not tough, and she hung on and hung on, but couldn't close the gap and get contact. It was a superb effort by Barton and erased any doubts about her ability to do well in the big meets ahead.
Wellesley won the girls team competition, but Newton avenged a home loss to Weymouth, beating the Wildcats by two points. It must have been a bitter pill to swallow for the Weymouth girls, who entered the meet undefeated and were anxious to prove that they were as good as their record. Becca MacDonald ran a game race to finish 4th overall, and Weymouth's second and third runners were 13th and 14th, but their dominant pack didn't perform as well as they had against Newton and Wellesley. It wouldn't have mattered, except Newton's freshman class, and in particular Nora Barnicle and Adina Henley-Bronstein, ran their best races of the year to place 26th and 29th, respectively. Looking forward, one might also note that Newton North's top five are all underclassmen so presumably they'll all be back next year.
In 2004, Wellesley was by far the dominant girls team. Not only did they place four runners in the the top five in the varsity race, they swept the first six places in the JV race. This year they came back to earth, and it looks like 2005 will feature close competition between Newton, Wellesley, Weymouth, and Natick.
In the boys varsity race, a lot went according to form, but there were also some surprises. For the fourth year in a row, a Newton North boy won the individual league championship. For the third time in four years, Newton North boys went 1-2 (the other year, they went 1-3). Brookline reclaimed the team title after three years of Newton North dominance. Brookline placed five runners in the top 12, a feat that Newton North accomplished in 2003 and 2004.
One of the great sub-plots to the race was the battle between Newton North and Wellesley for second-place team. Wellesley, you will recall, ended Newton North's five-year streak of consecutive dual meet wins by racing them to a tie at Walpole, and winning the tie-breaker on the performance of their sixth man. The league meet was just as close, but with the edge going to Newton. Unlike at Walpole, Brecher was able to use his strength to defeat the speedier Charlie Meade. Meanwhile, Noah Jampol beat last year's all-scholastic Tom Mayell and the rest of the Wellesley pack. The fate of the Tigers lay in the legs of Seb Putzeys and first-year XC runner Peter Sun, who had confided before the race, "I really don't feel like running today..." But Seb and Peter came through for 25th and 32nd, and that proved to be just enough to shake Wellesley out of second place. Ben Chebot and Charlie Krasnow also ran tough races, but Ben has been battling injuries and struggled to finish 39th in 17:45. Charlie finished 48th in 18:01.
Interestingly, if the boys' race was scored as a dual meet between Newton and Wellesley, the results come out like this:
NNHS Wellesley
1 3
2 5
4 6
10 7
12 8
-- --
29 29
And... it's a tie! In this scenario, Wellesley would win the tie-break again, and the frustration for Newton North would go on...
I guess, all in all, it's a good thing we have the rest of the league!
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