Emily Jones winning the Footlocker NE Regional (Photo: John Dye)
Saturday was a mighty impressive all-around day for Massachusetts H.S. girls' cross-country. Maybe Josh will point me to a day of better performances from decades past, but yesterday has to rank up there with the best of them.
In the Bronx, Bromfield's Emily Jones won the Footlocker Northeast Regional race, with Kristin Kasper also qualifying for the finals in San Diego. Last year Jones finished 2nd in 17:41. This year, she broke away from the pack at 2 miles and finished in 17:31, the fastest winning time in the Girls seeded race in ten years. Jones' VCP PR got her the win by seven seconds, and earned her a third trip to the finals.
Kasper, a three-time Mass. All-State Division I champion, ran 18:10 to finish 7th, an improvement of six seconds and five places over her 12th-place finish from 2007.
DyeStat Coverage of the Footlocker NE Regional
Meanwhile, in Wappinger falls, Kelsey Karys won the Nike XC Nationals Northeast region qualifier, and Lincoln-Sudbury overcame an 11-point deficit to Newton South at 2.5K to come back and win the team competition for the second year in a row. Newton South finished 2nd to earn the other automatic qualifying bid to Portland for the national championship. With Phillips Andover taking fourth, three of the top four teams were from Massachusetts.
At halfway, Karys was in a pack of five at the front of the race. She then ran the second half of the race 10 seconds faster than the first half to pull away to a 5-second win in 18:45.7. Newton South placed four runners in the top 15, but their fifth was well back in 47th. Lincoln-Sudbury, running as the Mercury TC, was led by Ellie Hylton in 6th (19:16.3) and placed all of their top five in the top 20 finishers.
NXN Northeast Regional Results
Just so the boys don't feel too left out, I should mention that Massachusetts had two boys qualifiers at the Footlocker race, as All-State D2 Champion Mike Moverman (Oliver Ames) and EMass D1 champion Phil Galebach (Medford) finished 6th and 7th (15:48 and 15:49, respectively).
Galebach recovered from a sub-par race at the All-State meet, and probably used all that training in the Middlesex Fells to good advantage on the back hills of the VCP course.
At NXN Regionals, Mansfield (without Shayne Collins) and Amherst represented Massachusetts, finishing 11th and 14th, respectively.
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