Ponies finish in first place at home meet

By Stuart Hedstrom 
Staff Writer

    DOVER-FOXCROFT — The Foxcroft Academy boys cross country team enjoyed some home cooking with a Sept. 19 meet on the team’s own course. The Pony boys would finish with a score of 44 points to place first out of five teams with a full contingent and earn the best score out of seven teams represented on the Friday afternoon run.

Piquette

Nelson

    Junior Gabe Piquette led Foxcroft by finishing third out of a field of 47. Piquette covered the 3.1 miles in a time of 19 minutes, 21.36 seconds. Right behind Piquette was junior Cooper Nelson in fourth place. Nelson, who had a busy 48 hours with soccer games the night before and morning after the cross country meet, had a time of 19:37.65.
    Senior Nathnael Feleke finished third for the Ponies, placing 10th overall at 20:32.10. The other two point-scoring runners were even down the final stretch and senior Noah Simpson ended up in 13th place at 20:59.83 with junior Kohei Kotani coming in 14th at 21:01.64 to round out the 44 points for Foxcroft.

Kotani, left,
and Simpson

    Also running for Foxcroft was sophomore Liam Casey, 16th at 21:05.95; junior Paul Birtwistle (another soccer playing doing double duty), 20th at 21:28.24; junior Hunter Giacomuzzi, 27th at 22:40.27; sophomore Peter Xue, 29th at 23:07.96; and sophomore Ethan Poland, 39th at 25:34.89.
    Dexter Regional High School freshman William Strauch took part in the meet, placing 18th with a time of 21:11.11
    The boys’ winner was Hermon High School senior Josh Zapsky at 18:21.38, about 50 seconds faster than the meet runner-up.
    Trailing Foxcroft’s 44 points was John Bapst with 62 and then Lee Academy’s 65, 74 for Central High School and Hermon with 106.
    Four Foxcroft girls ran on Sept. 19, one shy of the total needed for the team standings. Junior Jen Clawson led the Pony contingent by placing sixth out of a field of 37 entrants, running a time of 24:30.93.
    Senior Anna Sedlackova placed 20th in 27:43.86. Freshman Virginia Macomber came in 27th at 31:05.67 and in 30th place was sophomore Mariaisabel Cedeno at 33:55.52.
    The girls’ winner was John Bapst sophomore Amanda Boyd, who won in 21:35.07 or about a minute and 48 seconds faster than second place. Boyd and her teammates came in first with 23 points, followed by Lee with 45 and Hermon in third place with 64 points.

Clawson

Sedlackova

Feleke