Cross country: Amherst runners conquer unfamiliar terrain at Cherry Hill GC in win over Minnechaug (PHOTOS)

AMHERST — The Amherst Regional boys and girls cross country teams gave new meaning to the phrase ‘sight unseen’ in its dual meet against Minnechaug on Tuesday.

Instead of racing at its normal home course on school property, the Hurricanes took to Cherry Hill Golf Course for its meet against the Falcons and both Amherst squads came away with victories, despite a majority of the ‘Canes runners having no prior experience running on the nine-hole, municipal course.

Due to the renovations currently taking place at Amherst’s outdoor track, it wasn’t feasible to continue holding cross country meets there. Therefore, boys head coach Chris Gould considered numerous options for a home-meet site, before Cherry Hill stepped in to save the day.

“We were lucky to get this place,” Gould said. “We tried Hickory Ridge, but they don’t have enough trails over there. So then I had something worked out with Wildwood Cemetary, but we had to cross a road and they weren’t sure if it was going to work. We had been told ‘no’ here at first, then they called back and said ‘you can have those three dates.'”

While unorthodox, racing at Cherry Hill offers Hurricanes runners the chance to compete on a course where flat-land is hard to find, which is something girls co-coaches Elena Betke-Brunswick and Ronald Jacobs particularly enjoy.

“You might get different opinions from the athletes, but coaches love this kind of stuff,” Jacobs said.

“It’s always fun to race against Minnechaug,” Jacobs added. “They got a good team, really good coach, so we’ll see them many more times this season.”

Hurricanes junior Calvin Miller didn’t seem bothered by the elevation changes as the winner of the boys race. Miller crossed the makeshift finish line in 19 minutes, 8 seconds, good for a course record… at least for now.

“Try to conserve energy going up [the hills], but also try to push a bit to create a gap between whoever’s behind me,” Miller said on his approach to the hills. “Try to conserve energy then use it on the downhills.

“It was probably one of the hilliest courses I’ve ever been on,” Miller said.

Times reflected the course conditions as Miller’s first-place time was more than three minutes slower than his time at the Southern Maine Classic last weekend (15:55), which also measured out to a 5K race.

Teammates Peter Nedeau, Nico Lisle, Otis Fairey and Sam Woodruff rounded out the ‘Canes top five runners as the foursome all finished within one second of each other (19:46 to 19:47). As a result, Amherst won, 15-50, in the team score.

“I’m not going to overthink the thing,” Gould said. “Once we get Longmeadow here, they’re going to have to compete against the top runners and I think we’re prepared to do it.”

In the girls race, Minnechaug’s Maggie Joyce finished in first in 21:12, but the Hurricanes had five of the next six runners to claim the team score, 21-40.

Marit MacDonald (second, 21:32), Lilly Pope (third, 21:46), Nina Holden (fourth, 22:16) Genevieve Dole (fifth, 22:20) and Quynh Ly (seventh, 22:30) scored for Amherst as its fastest five.

“This course is no joke,” Jacobs said. “They had literally never seen this course. This was the first time they saw it. So to come out and run really hard, we know we’ve got another invitational on Saturday, so were looking at this week, trying to get two really solid race efforts and we saw a lot of solid race efforts today.”