THETFORD — The Woodstock High and Thetford Academy boys cross country teams both claimed runner-up honors at Saturday’s VPA state meet.
The Wasps were led by Riley Shepherd, who took second in the Division II race with a time of 17 minutes, 29 seconds, over the 5-kilometer course. Tad Darrah led the D-III Panthers with a third-place finish, 6.8 seconds in back of Shepherd.
Both local runners brought their own personal strategy into Saturday’s postseason race, hosted by TA.
Shepherd, a junior, has competed on Thetford’s course since fifth grade, so he knows it well, especially its notorious uphill crux.
“Every time I come out, I just try to improve one thing on the course,” Shepherd said. “Today, I was just trying to work the down-hills after Morty’s Monster. Just try to keep the others off. … I’m not the best running downhill, so today I felt really good on them, and I just felt like I could cruise.”
Said the senior Darrah: “I just tried to break the course up into pieces and run through each part as hard as I could, and then concentrate on the next part of the course and battle through some tough cramps I had. … I don’t normally have them, but today, just, I guess I was more tired than I thought I was going to be, but I was able to get through it.”
Shepherd and Darrah both finished among the top 25 across all three divisions on Saturday, thus earning a spot in the New England meet on Nov. 9 in Connecticut.
U-32 dominated Saturday’s D-II boys race, placing six runners in the top 10. Shepherd was followed on the runner-up Wasps by Owen Coates (11th), Mateo Bango (19th), Zed McNaughton (29th) and Calef Hepler (37th). Middlebury High took third overall.
The D-III team race was much closer, however, with Peoples Academy edging out the Panthers by a single point. Darrah was followed by Eamon Deffner (fifth), Tobin Durham (seventh) and Dan Wolstenholme (30th). Bellows Falls finished third, Windsor was 13th and Oxbow took 18th.
Hartford, which took seventh place in D-II, was led by Aaron Mitchell in 16th place. The senior said his familiarity with TA’s course proved beneficial.
“You get to know where the hills are and where to slow down, so you don’t work yourself too hard at first,” said Mitchell, who’s raced at Thetford an estimated 10 times throughout his career. “This is the race to give it your all.”
Thetford took third in a D-III girls race won by Bellows Falls, followed by Rice in second, Sharon Academy in sixth and Oxbow in 14th. Hartford finished ninth in the D-II race.
Charlotte Reimanis led the Phoenix with an eighth-place finish (22:43.8). The freshman nearly matched her older sister’s result from last year. Laila Reimanis took seventh place as a junior but was unable to compete on Saturday due to injury.
Charlotte Reimanis spoke to the team aspect of cross country when asked about her own top-10 finish.
“I feel like as much as it’s an individual sport, it’s more about the team,” she said. “It doesn’t matter how every person does, but it’s just like a fun team sport that everybody pitches into.”
Abby Egner finished in 13th place to lead TA. The freshman sat out of practice the week leading up to states due to a heel injury, but she went all-out on Saturday.
“It hurts,” Egner said of the injury. “But I just, like, pushed through it because I wanted to do well. I mean, it’s the state meet.”
Egner — who was followed by teammates Layla Hanissian (19th), Madelyn Durkee (23rd) and Morgan Gaffney (31st) — finished the final leg of the race with a single shoe after one slipped off near a shack along the route.
“It came untied before the 3K (mark),” she said after the missing footwear was returned to her. “And that was just where I ended up losing it.”