Lenox Harriers Out Front at County Opener
GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass. -- The Lenox cross country program missed out on the 2020-21 school year.
It came back in a big way on Thursday afternoon.
Dennis Love led a 1-2-3 sweep for the Millionaires in the boys race and Grace Elliot outkicked a couple of rivals down the stretch to finish as the top girl as all 10 Berkshire County League squads got together for the first time since the fall of 2019.
“We’ve all been training for this for years,” Love said after he was chased across the finish line by teammates Harry Touloukian and Maxwell Adam. “There’s a lot of strong competition in the county. We knew [Wahconah’s Riley Gladu] and [Hoosac Valley’s Justin Levesque], and [Pittsfield’s] Jack Archey. We had an idea that we could have some success.
“It was really devastating not having a high school season last year. The summer before last year, we trained every single day. Everyone was determined to show what we could do.”
Love said that the Millionaires did run some virtual races and time trials during the 2020 season. And they had a successful campaign on the track when pandemic conditions allowed all schools to hold an abbreviated spring season.
But Thursday was the first chance for Lenox to show its ready to make another run at the podium in the Western Mass meet, where the Millionaires’ girls were second and boys were fourth in 2019.
After Love’s time of 13 minutes, 42.44 seconds on the 2.6-mile course led the sweep at the head of the pack, Lenox also placed boys in 11th (Cormac Mathews) and 19th (Andrew McCormack) in the 119-team field.
Pittsfield’s Archey was the first non-Millionaire across the finish line, placing fourth in 14:15.18. Hoosac Valley’s Levesque, Mount Greylock’s Ollie Swabey and Wahconah’s Gladu placed fifth, sixth and seventh, respectively.
Thursday’s 10-team meet was a chance for all the county’s teams to size up one another, but they were not gunning for first place in the team standings. Instead, the meet was score as a series of dual meets for the teams’ regular-season win-loss records. Next week, the league returns to a more familiar format where half the teams compete at one site while the rest compete at a separate site.
The format of throwing all the county’s best harriers together produced one of the best finishes you’ll see on the Spartans’ track, site of the race’s last 300 meters.
Lenox’s Elliot beat out Mount Greylock’s Grace Malone by less than a second, and Pittsfield’s Kellie Harrington was less than half a second behind Malone in third.
Elliot won with a time of 15:39.27, seven-tenths better than Malone’s 15:40.56.
Mount Greylock, which was not scoring against Lenox on this day, would have come out top in a hypothetical head-to-head. In addition to Malone, the Mounties placed fourth (Katherine Swann), seventh (Josephine Smith), eighth (Ainsley Abel) and 12th (Erin Keating).
Mounties coach Hilary Greene was less concerned with scoring than seeing her runners back on course.
“The first race, there’s just so much newness,” Greene said. “We have 16 new seventh-graders. I just want them to get their feet wet, no expectations. Some of them haven’t raced in two years.
“We haven’t done a whole lot of hard work yet. We’ve been trying to ease into the season. In the past, I think I’ve made the mistake of having them peak too early, so we’re trying not to do that again. I was really happy with how Kate [Swann] and Grace [Malone] raced as a pack and were together and supporting each other.”
Lenox’s girls placed five runners in the top 20. Pittsfield had two, along with Harrington, in the top 10, as Sydney Ferris and Grace Ungewitter placed ninth and 10th, respectively.
Boys Top 20
1. Dennis Love (Len) 13:42.44; 2. Harry Touloukian (Len) 13:59.47; 3. Maxwell Adam (Len) 14:09.12; 4. Jack Archey (PHS) 14:15.18; 5. Justin Levesque (HV) 14:17.58; 6. Ollie Swabey (MG) 14:32.85; 7. Riley Gladu (W) 15:00.32; 8. Peyton Webb (W) 15:08.33; 9. Andrew Petropulos (MG) 15:10.82; 10. Asa Chard (PHS) 15:11.25; 11. Cormac Mathews (Len) 15:11.54; 12. Aidan Garcia (W) 15:13.24; 13. Lucas Wildrick (W) 15:16.12; 14. Ryan Keating (MG) 15:16.57; 15. Jude Bakija (MG) 15:25.89; 16. Cam Bencivenga (Tac) 15:34.25; 17. Ezra Holzapfel (MG) 15:35.59; 18. Josh Perrier (Lee) 15:41.65; 19. Andrew McCormack (Len) 15:42.47; 20. Parker Winters (MG) 15:43.58
Girls Top 20
1. Grace Elliot (Len) 15:39.27; 2. Grace Malone (MG) 15:40.56; 3. Kellie Harrington (PHS) 15:41.02; 4. Katherine Swann (MG) 15:41.02; 5. Madeleine Rocheleau-Holmes (MM) 17:04.14; 6. Alice Culver (Len) 17:17.22; 7. Josephine Smith (MG) 17:29.64; 8. Ainsley Abel (MG) 17:45.43; 9. Sydney Ferris (PHS) 17:48.06; 10. Grace Ungewitter (PHS) 18:06.59; 11. Julianne Harwood (Len) 18:10.83; 12. Erin Keating (MG) 18:16.93; 13. Ahliya Phillips (Tac) 18:23.74); 14. Anna Martin (Lee) 18:33.38; 15. Brianna Kelly (Lee) 189:35.88; 16. Elyssa Scrimo (Len) 18:37.94; 17. Sarah Polumbo (MG) 18:41.15; 18. Anne Miller (MG) 18:46.23; 19. Audrey Touloukian (Len) 18:50.59; 20. Annie Art (MG) 18:56.04.