By Kevin Sjoberg
Sports Reporter
CARIBOU — High school cross country teams in Aroostook County made the trip to Caribou High School Friday for a meet held in very windy, rainy and cold conditions on a newly-designed 3.1-mile course, which will be used when the Vikings host the Penobscot Valley Conference championship meet next month.
The hosts captured team titles for both girls and boys, while the individual titles went to Washburn’s Carsyn Koch and Presque Isle’s Matt Eager.
Koch picked up the victory in dominating fashion. Her finishing time of 20 minutes, 54.63 seconds was a minute faster than meet runner-up Mackenzie Belyea of Caribou, who came in at 21:54.48.
Washburn also featured the third- and fourth-place finishers — Mackenzie Worcester (22:41.4) and Carmen Bragg (22:51.21). Teammate Joan Overman, who was 16th out of 48 competitors with a 25:19.88 clocking, helped the Beavers to a team score of 37.
However, Caribou’s depth was too much to match. After Bragg, eight Viking runners were next to cross the line. They included, in consecutive order, Robyn Larrabee (22:57.04), Kristin Macek (23:03.67), Katelynn Plourde (23:10.32), Ashley Richards (23:43.87), Kelly Kashian (23:44.06), Nerissa Larrabee (23:47.82), Chelsea Bard (23:56.84) and Renee Dube (24:05.77). The Caribou team, which had a total of 27 runners competing, compiled 28 points to prevail.
“I was very proud of the girls because we came into the race with a goal of running in groups and helping each other out to try and improve as a team as opposed to running as individuals,” said Viking coach Tom Beckum. “Most girls accomplished the task and felt great after the race. I think this will give them confidence to continue working together in bigger meets and as a result our team will be stronger.”
Presque Isle, which placed third as a team with 71 points, had the meet’s 14th- and 15th-place finishers in Amanda Palmer (24:25.05) and Shelby Condon (24:25.25).
Heather Brown led Limestone-MSSM by placing 19th overall in 25:57.1.
In the boys’ race, Eager turned in his first victory of the season after placing second in all three of the previous races. Eager’s time of 17:21.22 was 20 seconds ahead of his chief County rival — Caleb Chapman of Caribou. The Viking senior came in at 17:41.64.
Caribou coach Roy Alden said Chapman “ran extremely well” and that he and Eager were “neck and neck for the first two miles.”
The next three runners to complete the course were Caribou runners Ron Lund (18:33.34), Brendan Wood (18:34.17) and Lucas Kinney (18:45.15).
“Brendan is improving with every race,” said Alden, adding that Lund was recovering from the flu and did not practice for most of last week.
The Vikes were without two of their top seven runners (Ryan Washington and Jesse Sandstrom) due to the flu and a third, Kjetil Rossignol, missed his second consecutive meet because of a pulled muscle, but teammates Josh Kovach (seventh, 19:34.53), Zeb Johnson (ninth, 19:51.85) and Brendan Cyr (11th, 20:05.28) performed well in their absence and helped give Caribou its low meet team score of 23.
Presque Isle, second with 46 points, had Trevor Levesque in the top 10 with a 20:02 finish.
Micah Wiley of GHCA (sixth, 19:31.14), Washburn’s Nick Bragg (eighth, 19:49), Hodgdon’s Nick Lunn (12th, 20:16.87), Fort Kent’s Sam Ouellette (19th, 21:34.2) and Limestone-MSSM’s Charles McDonald (37th, 24:33.36) were tops for their respective squads.
The Beavers were the third-place team with 96 points, followed by GHCA (102) and Fort Kent (113). With just one runner each, Hodgdon and Limestone-MSSM did not figure in the team results.
The next two races are the Old Town Sectionals Saturday afternoon at 2 p.m. and the Festival of Champions in Belfast Oct. 1. The girls race begins at 11:30 a.m. and the boys race at 12:30 p.m.
