WESTFIELD – Members of the Frontier girls cross country team knew it was going to be a close race between the Redhawks and rival Hampshire Regional on Sunday.
They just weren’t sure exactly how tight it was.
It came down to a single point between the two programs, and despite falling just one point behind, the Frontier girls still earned a third-place team finish with 85 points, just a lone point behind Hampshire with 84 at the Western Mass. Division 2 Cross Country Championships at Stanley Park.
“I definitely think that Hampshire and Frontier have always been sort of neck-and-neck,” Frontier’s Leah Gump said. “But everybody on their team is so nice, so it’s a friendly rivalry.”
Though Hampshire earned the second-place finish behind champion Mount Greylock, it was Frontier that had the best performance of the day with Gump placing third overall with a time of 20 minutes, 14.76 seconds.
Also in the top 10 for Frontier was senior Abigail Howard, who crossed the line in eighth with a time of 21:03.57.
“I was really thinking about going out there and just giving it the best that I had. We had a longer break after our last league meet. So I was well rested,” Gump said. “I just went out there, started off fast and tried to hold on to that as long as I could.”
Mohawk Trail had a strong team performance as well, placing fifth overall with 137 points. The top performer for the Warriors was eighth grader Natalie Lanoue, the on ly other middle-schooler besides Hampshire Regional’s Kathleen Barry to crack the top 20. Anya Read (21:49.57) and Valerie Bzomowski (21:52.04) were two other top finishers for the Warriors, placing 21st and 22nd, respectively.
Greenfield’s Ava Fortin paced the Green Wave contingent in 34th place (22:28).
On the boys side of things, Frontier placed sixth overall as a team with 220 points and Mohawk Trail placed ninth with 312 points. Individually, Mohawk Trail junior Emmett Johnson had a fantastic day for the Warriors, placing fourth with a time of 16:48.01.
“I just wanted to break 17 (minutes) and get top 10 if I could, which I did by quite a bit,” Johnson said. “I kind of thought that I was going way too fast in the beginning because I was like third. But I mean, it turned out pretty well.”
Johnson hopes that his sky-high trajectory will continue into the rest of the postseason, since he has some lofty goals for all-states. He wants to qualify individually, an achievable goal, and hopes to finish in the top 30 – a significant jump upward from his positioning last year.
“Hopefully a top 30 at states. I got in like the mid-hundreds last year, so a pretty big leap,” Johnson said.
Greenfield’s Jackson Caron ran to an impressive 12th place finish, crossing the line in 17:30.
Frontier’s Luke Howard placed 14th overall with a 17:40.09 and teammate Evan Hedlund finished 24th with an 18:17.65. Mohawk Trail’s Vincent Gauthier placed 17th with a 17:53.43 time.