Monday marks the beginning of indoor track for Massachusetts high schools, but for a few runners, indoor will have to wait a bit longer while the cross-country season continues.
Nike Cross-Country National Qualifying Meets
The NXN Northeast and New York Regionals were held at Bowdoin Park in Wappinger Falls, NY, on Saturday.
Hamilton-Wenham, only the runner-up a week ago to Bishop Feehen in Mass. Div 2, won the Northeast Regional outright and qualified for the National Meet. Although their top runner was only 27th overall, H-W placed all of their five scorers in the top 60 and that was plenty good enough to hold off runner-up Champlain Valley (VT) and a surprising performance from Weston (MA) in third. It was an unlucky day for Feehan, as the Shamrocks placed only 8th after a blanket finish from teams 2-7. Incredibly, Feehen was only 28 points from 2nd place and an automatic qualifying spot.
In the boys race, Pembroke, the OTHER runner-up from Mass. Div 2, followed their near miss from a week ago with a strong second-place finish here, earning themselves guaranteed tickets to Portland. The Titans benefited from outstanding runs by Wesley Gallagher (3rd overall) and Christian Stafford (12th overall), and a comeback performance from Joe Vercollone, who finished fourth for his team and 32nd overall in 16:55, a full minute faster than he ran at Franklin Park a week ago.
Other Mass. teams scoring well included Div I champs Brookline in 9th place, and Div 2 champs Bishop Feehen in 10th. Apparently winning a team title in the State Meet is bad luck for doing well here.
NXN Northeast Regionals Results
Footlocker Northeast Regionals
Saturday was also the day of the Footlocker Regional Meets, with the Northeast regional meet held at Sunken Meadows State Park on Long Island.
In the seeded boys race, Newark's Edward Cheserek ran 15:20.5 to win and break John Gregorek's thirty-year-old course record. Meanwhile, three Massachusetts runners finished in the top ten to qualify for the National Finals in San Diego. Marshfield's Joel Hubbard (15:49.9) placed 4th, St. John's Jonathan Green (15:52.5) placed 7th, and King Philip's Chris Allen (16:03.9) placed 10th to claim the last spot.
Amazingly, the next two runners were also from Massachusetts -- Marshfield's Kevin Thomas and Wakefield's Stephen Robertson placed 11th and 12th -- and the Bay State won it's first team competition in a long time (has Mass. ever won?)
In the seeded girls race, Peabody's Catarina Rocha (18:19.9) finished third overall, the only Massachusetts girl to make the finals. Rocha is returning to San Diego, having qualified for the finals in 2010, as well.
2011 Footlocker Northeast Results Page
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1 comment:
I guess now that there is some down time between the outdoor and indoor seasons, we'll finally get the final Tanzania vacation reports!
Come on. It's almost a year since you left for Africa. You can't leave your loyal readership hanging this long.
Thanks.
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