WESTFIELD – After the PVIAC championship meet was postponed a week due to weather, the Pioneer Valley couldn’t have asked for a better day to host a cross-country meet the following weekend, with blue skies and a crisp fall breeze on Saturday at Stanley Park.
Northampton’s Riley Cole brought the heat to the course, setting a blistering 5:01/mile pace on the 5K course and winning the boys’ overall race in 15 minutes, 37.08 seconds, a dominant performance in what has been a dominant season for the senior.
Theodore King-Pollet finished 10th overall for the Blue Devils in 15:67.08, and the team secured a third-place finish overall with 80 points, edged out by West Springfield by just four points in second place. Longmeadow won the team title with 67 points.
Amherst finished just six points behind Northampton in the team fight with 86 points in fourth, and Hampshire Regional rounded out the top five with 164 points.
Cole’s performance was certainly an impressive one, but it was the type of performance his head coach Eric Pfalzgraf has come to expect from the gifted senior.
“At this point, it’s definitely expected behavior from from Riley,” Pfalzgraf said. “It definitely is not as surprising and it’s, I don’t know, it’s awe inspiring to see him keep doing it and just stack wins on wins, and records on records. The crazy thing is that it wasn’t even 100-percent for him today. So he’s very, very special, I’ve been saying it all season.”
Pfalzgraf was pleased with his entire team’s performance, which included a bundle of personal bests that helped Northampton earn its third-place team finish.
“Out of our top 10, I think eight out of 10 PR’d today, and by massive amounts too, like a minute,” Pfalzgraf said. “Riley keys it off, but (the rest of the team) feed off of that and how ambitious he is, so I’m just seeing that pay off. You see how laser-focused they all are because of him.”
Other notable individuals in the boys race were Amherst’s David Pinero-Jacome (12th, 16:58.97), Kyle Yanko (14th, 17:06.52), Diego Lopez (15th, 17:06.84), and Ben Buffone (19th, 17:16.04), whose impressive pack running contributed to the team’s high finish.
Hampshire’s Gulian Marconi (16th, 17:06.95) and Northampton’s Davis Wheat (20th, 17:21.69) also cracked the top 20, as well as Jude Mourad (21st, 17:22.65) who finished just behind Wheat. Odin Moore (17th, 17:10.44) was the first finisher for the Pioneer Valley Chinese Immersion Charter School.
On the girls’ side of things, it was all Amherst, as Hurricane runners Tamar Byl-Brann and April Schilling both cracked the top 10, finishing in 19:42.21 (fourth overall) and 20:05.09 (eighth overall), respectively.
Amherst landed second in the team rankings with 71 points, behind winner Longmeadow (51 points). Hampshire Regional was third (93 points), while Northampton took fourth (112 points) and Frontier was fifth (165 points).
Also in the top 10 individual finishers was Hampshire’s Sylvie Mahon-Moore (fifth), who also broke 20 minutes with a final time of 19:50.61, just eight one-hundredths of a second ahead of a sixth-place finisher from Longmeadow.
With the pandemic putting a damper on things last season, Amherst assistant coach Ron Jacobs wasn’t sure what to expect going into this year. What he and the team got was a rivalry with Longmeadow, who has been taking the area by storm this season to the tune of an undefeated record.
“This is the most, the youngest and most inexperienced team we’ve had probably here in 10 years,” Jacobs said. “We’re really excited to have a team in Longmeadow that we can compete against in a rivalry and teams that will challenge us.”
The Hurricanes have been co-led by Byl-Brann and Schilling, two juniors who have been helping their younger teammates get better and better as the season has gone on.
“They’ve been two of our team leaders,” Jacobs said. “They lead the workouts together and in our meets, sometimes Tamar has been our lead runner, sometimes April has been our lead runner. They’ve been working well together.”
Placing in the top 20 for the girls were Northampton’s Lily Shimpach (11th, 20:42.16) and Esme Marini-Rapoport (12th, 20:44.16), with Frontier’s Leah Gump right behind them (13th, 20:45.20).
Hampshire’s Ellia Masenior (14th, 21:01.17) and Sicily Chase (19th, 21:14.27) and Amherst’s Elizabeth Sawicki (16th, 21:03.35) and Amrita Rutter (17th, 21:10.35) also placed in the first 20 individual finishers.