Cullen Claims Conference Crown! Girls' Team Finishes First; Boys Fourth at BSC Meet.

Girls leaders just before the 1 mile mark.

Leading up to the Bay State Conference Championships the Needham girls' cross country team was 11-0.  They had beaten everyone in the league, they had finished fourth at Theford, second at Amherst and won the Twilight Invitational and yet they still felt like there was something left to prove.  And so they proved it, winning the meet with a score of 35 points, 29 ahead of both Newton North and Weymouth.  If beating all the teams in the BSC during head-to-head competition was unprecedented, winning the conference meet outright with the lowest team score of any winning team in the last eight years was unheard of.  In fact, the Rockets were so dominant that if the conference meet was scored like a dual with every other team combining their efforts to make one "super-team", Needham still would have taken it 28-29!

Margie Cullen sprinting to win!

As the gun went off and a horde of girls sprinted across the field at Coakley Middle School in Norwood, Needham went straight to the front.  Passing the one mile mark at 5:50 was Margie Cullen and Natick's Sarah Lagan with Caroline Turner, Sarah Armstrong and Julianna Donovan as well as Newton North's Evie Heffernan and Sonya Jampel and Weymouth's Ashley Betts in arrears.  Cullen and Lagan held down the accelerator while battling back and forth for the lead and began to string the field out.  But it was Needham's fantastic four that kept the pace and the pressure high and slowly the front pack splintered apart with only Lagan able to keep up.  With just over a half mile to go, Cullen threw the knockout punch and ran away to a solo win covering the 5k course in 18:50 and becoming the first freshman to win the BSC meet since Ashley Davidson of Natick in the fall of 2000.  Lagan held on to finish 2nd in 18:54 with Armstrong and Donovan claiming 3rd and 4th respectively.  Turner who has been strong for the Rockets all season overcame an off day to finish 8th in 19:27 and Hallie Armstrong ran tough to place 19th.  Katie Horton and Rachel Blautein rounded out the scoring for Needham placing 21st and 24th.

While the boys' team didn't make quite the waves that the girls did, they still put up a very solid showing despite running without three of their top seven and utilizing a conservative team approach.  Team records in the Bay State Conference are decided during the regular season dual meets.  Thus the conference meet serves as little more than an exhibition with potential bragging rights going to any team that avenges a regular season loss.  The NHS boys hope to qualify for the All-State Championships held in three weeks at Northfield Mountain but before that goal becomes a reality, there are several hurdles they need to get over between now and then including getting healthy.

The boys run relaxed.

Boys leaders

As the race got under way, a pack of blue and gold eased off the starting line at a pedestrian pace.  Conversely, Newton North's Gabe Montague took the race by the scruff of the neck and proceeded to hammer the first couple of miles towing along a pack of four including teammate Mike Schlichting, Wellesley's Danny Palladino and Weymouth's Nolan Parsley.  Parsley seemed to be the class of the field with a recent win in the McIntyre Twilight invitational and a 2 mile PR on the track of 9:26 but it was Montague (perhaps spurred on by the presence of his teammate) that kept pushing the pace.  Meanwhile behind the front pack, Needham's Tyler Hagen and Adrian Amaya battled with Brookline's Jesse Fajnzylber and Framingham's Brian Gilligan for best of the rest.  Further back in the field,  captain Zak Heier, Alex Elman, Ben Baron, Mike Newfield and Brendan Gillis bided their time waiting for the right moment to make their move.  Just after two miles the pack of five began working their way up through the field before ultimately finishing 30th, 32nd, 37th, 39th and 40th.  Meanwhile, Amaya and Hagen gave the Rockets a strong one-two punch by finishing 7th and 8th in 16:31 and 16:34 respectively.  Even with a rather modest effort the boys' team managed to place 4th overall merely falling short to Newton North, Brookline and Wellesley.

Haley Filippine leads teammates Alex Clifford and Emily Wills.

There were several other top ten finishes for the Rockets including a second place by Alex Turner in the boys' Freshmen race.  Turner sprinted off the line and led nearly from start to finish before ultimately getting out kicked by Natick's Chris Peabody.  Both athletes were timed at 8:45 for the 2.5k distance.  Alex Cohen also finished well placing 6th in the same event.

In the boys' JV 5k, Drew Khalaj competed well finishing 4th overall in a personal best time of 17:26.  Finishing behind Khalaj but still garnering top twenty honors were Jack Strollo, Cal Fleming, Nathan Maynard and Derek Howes.  In the girls' JV race, Haley Rayment ran straight to the front of the pack while teammate Haley Filippine took a more cautious approach.  In the end, both athletes prevailed with Filippine finishing in 9th and Rayment taking 12th.

Full results can be found at: http://www.coolrunning.com/results/12/ma/Oct27_BaySta_set1.shtml.

Next up for the Rockets is the MSTCA Coaches Invitational at the Developmental Center in Wrentham.  The meet is Saturday November 3rd and is scheduled to begin at 12:15 p.m.

A victorious girls' team poses for the paparazzi.

Photos courtesy of Kim Benner and Ken Horton.