By Senior Correspondent Marty Ogden, Editing and Graphics by Ron Knapp
49th Manchester Invitational
Derryfield Park, Manchester, NH
One of the biggest meets in the northeast this weekend was the 49th Manchester Invitational in New Hampshire. It is held at historical Derryfield Park, site of the Granite State Championships and frequent host of New Englands. Nearly 80 schools from all over the region were split into large and small divisions and several CT schools did quite well in this highly competitive meet.
Boys Large School Varsity Race
East Lyme, the defending Class MM champions, are looking to make some noise at the New England level this year. The Vikings had their highest finish ever last year to take 6th at the postseason regional meet. They traveled north to face the defending Mass champion, Brookline and the Vermont champion St. Johnsbury Academy. Led by All New England runner Sean McCauley, they simply dominated the competition. The senior finished 3rd in 16:12.4 over the 5000m course with his teammate Jilali Benjdid only ten seconds behind in 7th. The top five finished under a minute from each other in the top 30 to score 76 points with Brookline at 126 and St. Johnsbury Academy combined for 140 points in the 36 team field.
Coach Mike Flynn noted that Sam Leone (15th) and Matt Carrier (26th) were both sick but ran well overall and “McCauley had a little injury a few weeks ago but is just fully getting back into it. Our goal next week is to get 3-4 runners under 16 minutes on the much faster Ocean State Invitational course in Rhode Island.”
Fresh off a great race at the Wilton Invitational last week, Alex Fisher of Loomis Chaffee finished 2nd for the 2nd week in a row, behind Foot Locker 3rd place finisher Tam Gavenas of Phillips Academy who won in 15:24.8.
Girls Large School Varsity Race
Glastonbury, the top rated girls team in the Marathon Sports Connecticut HS Coaches Preseason XC Poll came north and finished 5th overall. Oyster River, the New England runner-up last year switched places with defending champions Champlain Valley and won by a score of 59 to 83 points. But the Guardians had the individual winner in Brooke Strauss. The senior was part of a lead pack of a half dozen runners at the mile mark but pulled ahead in the 2nd mile that climbs part of the way up a ski slope before a steep descent for another half mile. Her finishing time of 18:16.1 was over 40 seconds ahead of Greta Hammer of Needham, the Mass Meet…
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