Amherst Girls XC Team Wins Class A Western Mass Championship

The Amherst Regional High School girls’ cross country team edged out local rival Northampton 56 – 58, to win the Western Mass Class A cross country championship at Stanley Park in Westfield on Saturday, October 28.  Fourteen schools competed in the Class A race. It was the second consecutive Western Mass title for the Amherst Girls and their 28th dating back to 1989.  

Junior, Elizabeth Sawicki was the top finisher for Amherst. She covered the 5k course in 20:42 and finished 4th. Other finishers for Amherst were: Isla Cusick 8th (21:05), Maya Tkachenko Coggeshall-Burr 15^th (22:08.03), Lily Pope 16^th (22:08.08), Felix Goeckel 17^th (22:12), Eliza Zimmerman 23^rd (22:38), and Brooke Nedeau 27^th (22.52).

Top overall finisher was junior Megan Moran from Westfield who won the championship with a time of 18:53.

Complete girls results can be found here.

Amherst was not the favorite in this race having lost to Northampton in a dual meet the previous week. But they pulled off a dramatic finish to grab the win. In cross country, each team enters as many as seven runners with the finishing places of the first five finishers from each team added up to designate a team’s score. The sixth and seventh runners from a team can contribute to the final outcome by finishing in front of a scoring finisher from another team, displacing them or moving them back in the finish order. That is what happened last Saturday when Amherst’s 6^th and 7^th runners both finished just in front of Northampton’s number five runner, pushing her back two spots. That displacement proved to be just enough to hand Amherst the victory.

Coach Ron Jacobs judged this race the best performance of the team this year.  He said, “It was a great day for the team. We told them the night before the race that one of our best chances to win was to get our seven runners in before Northampton’s or Longmeadow’s fifth runner. We knew that would be a big challenge, but we have great depth this year, and we were confident in all of our runners. At the 2 mile mark I think we were in 3rd place in the team competition, but everyone dug deep and showed their strength and grit. Collectively, I think we passed at least 10 runners in the last 300 meters to secure the victory. This is a young and relatively inexperienced team — only two of our runners in the varsity race were racing varsity last year. A performance like that should be a big confidence boost for them, and is a sign of great things to come in the future.”

The Amherst Boys’ team also competed in the championships and finished third with 90 points behind Ludlow (29) and Longmeadow (70) in the Class A division. Senior Will Larson was the top Amherst finisher in the boys’ race, completing the 5 kilometer circuit in 16:46.  Other Amherst finishers were Calvin Miller 19^th (17:40), Nico Lisle 20th (17:42), Sam Woodruff 21^st (17:48), Kyle Yanko 30^th (18:27), Owen Platt 33^rd (18:33), and Alden Pope 38^th (18:43),

Junior Joseph Keroack of Ludlow was the individual champion winning with a time of 15:52.

Complete boys results can be found here.

Both Amherst teams will compete in the qualifier for the Division 2 State Meet at the Wrentham Development Center on November 11.