Bethanie Brown is a senior at Waterville HS. She ran XC for the first time last fall, and had some success. Brown finished as the runner-up, she would go on to finish 5th in the New England championship. That was just the beginning of what was to come during the track season, as indoor Brown earned All-American honors in the 2 Mile, and capped off the outdoor season with a state all-time best for 1600m. follow Bethanie as she prepares for her 2012 XC season.
It was a crazy day at Belfast yesterday for the regional championships. Before my race even began, I could see it was going to be rough. Kids from the class A races before us were flooding into the gym soaked and covered in mud.
Our team went on a walk-through and laughed at our luck as we walked through stretches of ankle-deep mud and sloshed through marsh-like grassy areas. Mud squelched around our feet like some sort of sucking mechanism, and the hills in the woods, we joked, would be easier to go up and down if we had some skis. Oh, and did I mention that a muddy stream that would normally flow alongside the course had overflowed onto part of the trail?
If anything, though, the treacherous conditions made our team more excited for the race. There was no avoiding it -- we were going to get muddy!
And we weren't wrong to be excited. At the end of the day we were shocked to find that we got 2nd place! Runner up! It's the first time in a LONG time (if ever, I'm not sure) that the Waterville Cross Country girls had managed such a feat. Looking back at the math, each girl in the top 5 on our team qualified individually for States (top 30). That wasn't what we were seeded for, either. Lara moved up 5 places, Lauren and Erica each moved up 9 places, and Tiana moved up 7 places.
So even the mud couldn't spoil our day yesterday. Coming home with that plaque in our hands was really cool.
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