Cross Country Skiers Named Athletes of the Week

Despite sports and society's sometimes single-minded focus on the top of the podium, if the recently completed Winter Olympics taught us nothing, it is that gold is not the only thing that glitters.

 

This week's iBerkshires.com/Bedard Bros. Athletes of the Week capped seasons of consistent excellence by helping their teams win silver at the 2018 Massachusetts Nordic Skiing Championships at Berkshire East.

 

Overcoming a challenging schedule, slushy conditions and all but one of their cross country rivals, the Mount Greylock boys and Lenox girls put themselves in positions that most of the teams could only dream about.

 

Lenox's Maggie Sorrentino finished the 5-kilometer race in 21 minutes, 3.7 seconds to lead a pack of Millionaires who were consistently the second best team in the Berkshire County League and who were remarkably consistent under the lights at the state meet.

 

Lenox scored racers in places 18 through 21 to finish with 74 team points -- behind champion Mount Greylock but six points ahead of third-place Concord-Carlisle. In so doing, Sorrentino and her teammates improved on their third-place finish from 2017 at Prospect Mountain.

 

The Mount Greylock boys finished first in the state a year ago thanks, in part, to Jakin Miller's ninth-place showing at Prospect.

 

This week, the Mounties saw a seven-year run atop the podium come to an end when 2017 runner-up Concord-Carlisle finished first.

 

Mount Greylock was the second best team out of 17 in the state, and Miller was the lone Berkshire County student-athlete in the top 10 out of 128 competitors.

 

After helping the Mounties take first at every league competition this winter, Miller helped them take second with a seventh-place finish.

 

The iBerkshires.com Athlete of the Week is sponsored by Bedard Bros. Auto of Cheshire.