Falmouth and Bonny Eagle split the boys' and girls' races Friday September 15 at Falmouth Community Park. For the girls, the Bonny Eagle Scots with 31 points edged Falmouth, which finished with 34. Biddeford followed with 83 while Noble (94) and South Portland (128) rounded out the five team field.
On the boys side the Falmouth Yachtsmen had a comfortable margin, finishing with 20 points to the 55 put up by Bonny Eagle. Biddeford was not far behind with 70. South Portland (107) and Noble (138) closed things out.
In what could easily be a preview of the girls Southern Maine Class A Regional final the Scots and Yachtsmen matched up well with Bonny Eagle as each team put four runners among the top ten finishers.
Falmouth has had to do without Malaika Pasch, the 2016 Class A Maine girls' cross country champion, as she continues to recover from a stress fracture. But team competitions have gone pretty well for the Yachtsmen even in Pasch's absence; Falmouth fans have just had to get used to seeing first years Sofie Matson and Karley Piers lead the pack. And that's exactly what they got to see as Matson and Piers shot out to what appeared to be commanding leads early.
The course, at Falmouth's Community Park, tracks the perimeter of some youth soccer fields for about 300 to 400 meters in the flat before heading out into the rolling fields of the park where it winds back and forth across a meadow over well mowed and maintained grass trails to the first mile marker. It then enters the woods for a bit and, after crossing a brook, immediately makes an abrupt turn to the right to climb a steep hill and then continuing on to return to the meadow. It retraces, in reverse order, the meadow crossing. The course ends back on the soccer fields where it started for the final 300 or 400 meters.
Coming off the soccer field the first time Matson had a big lead on Piers. Matson maintained the lead and cruised to first place with a time of 19:14. Piers in turn, came off the field with big lead over the chase pack. Buried in the chase pack was Pasch who ran about a mile or so at an easy pace before dropping out.
Behind Piers were three Scots, Ami Beaumier, Kayla Raymond and Christine Toy. The trio kept time together, three abreast for about three quarters of the race, before Beaumier eased away to overtake Piers in site of the finish and take the second spot with a time of 19:51 Piers finished third at 19:43. Raymond took 4th at 20:37, and Toy rounded out the top five with a finishing time of 20:42.
For the bulk of the run the trio of Scots were followed, at a respectful distance, by Biddeford's Leia Dorais and the Scot's Emma Abbot, they too matched pace until Abbot pulled away in the last 50 meters to grab 6th place and the 4th scoring position for Bonny Eagle. Dorais was followed shortly by Noble's Hailey Boardman who took 8th before Falmouth's Kayla Sarazin, Caitlyn Camelio and Lauren Welch crossed in quick order to close the scoring for Falmouth.
With Bonny Eagle's Ella Dunne finishing the scoring for the Scots in 14th place Bonny Eagle captured the team win.
Other scorers for Biddeford were Denni Rivard (12th), Sits Young (13th), Andrea Carpenter and Bekah Robinson.
Noble's Hailey Boardman finished 8th and Taylor Arsenault finished 18th. Rachel Kingsley was the top finisher for South Portland.
Turning the tables on the Scots was the Falmouth boys team as the Yachtsmen took eight of the top ten spots. Only Bonny Eagle's Aiden Willey, finishing 3rd (17:29) and Biddeford's Sam Mills at 5th (17:54) punctured the wave of blue uniforms. For the first mile and half Willey kept pace with Falmouth's eventual winner, Connor Piers (16:40) , and with runner-up John Auer (16:50), but by the time the leaders came out of the woods and onto the meadow for the second time Piers and Auer had begun to stretch out the lead. Alex Kinley (4th), Charles Henning (5th) and Douglas Cooke (7th) closed the scoring for Falmouth.
Behind Willey to score for the Scots were Anthony Breton (11th() Christian Tomison (12th), Justin Tomison (18th) and Anthony Mason (19th).
Biddeford's other scorers were Kyle Bashara(14th), Seth Perry 15th), Thomas Kaiser (21st) and William Harriman (26th).
South Portland's Liam Piper finished well at 18:37 for the 13th spot. Tyler Shettler led Noble.