Caribou, ME – Greater Houlton Cross Country’s exceptional talent and sportsmanship was on full display this weekend at the Caribou Invitational on Saturday, September 9, 2023. Competing on the rolling hills and woods trails of Caribou’s 5k course, our athletes delivered outstanding performances with the girls’ team securing victory. The boys’ team would place a strong third overall, despite unique scoring rules that would have placed them as team runners up in a conventional scoring system.
The Caribou Invite is a unique meet in the Cross Country world in that instead of running one big race for each category (varsity boys, varsity girls, combined jv), the meet instead pits each school’s runners against each other in smaller races. Every school’s number one runner will race, then every school’s number two will have their own race, and so on until the number sevens. It does make for a slightly longer day, but does allow for runners who do not normally have the opportunity to win a race the chance to do so. For the teams, a school’s five best finishes are tallied and scored with a perfect score in this format being five instead of the usual 15 in a regular meet.
The girls’ team demonstrated why they are one of the top teams in Class C by clinching the first-place victory over the field which included last week’s Ellsworth Invitational winners John Bapst, who would finish second. The girls won four races and had a runner up finisher in Varsity Girls #5 race for an overall team score of six. Individually, it was Teanne Ewings leading the charge with the fastest overall time on the day and taking the win in V. Girls #1. Teammates Natalie Johnson and Leanne Ross would record wins in the V. Girls #2 and V. Girls #3 races by recording the second and third fastest times on the day respectively. Our next win came in V. Girls #4 with Andrea Ross. Katie McQuarrie evened out our scoring with her runner up effort in V. Girls #5 and Amelia Drake would record a third place finish in the V. Girls #6.
