Pouring rain did not stop the Windham cross country team from showing they were ready to compete in the Class A Regional championship on Saturday, Oct. 21 at Twin Brooks Recreation Area in Cumberland. The Windham girls’ team all qualified for the state championship and the boys earned a 10th place finish; just one team spot shy of going to the state championship.
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| Windham sophomore Sydney Broadbent keeps a steady pace early in the Class A girls' Cross Country Regional Championships race at Twin Brook recreational area on Saturday, Oct. 21 in Cumberland. PHOTO BY MATT PASCARELLA |
“We knew it was going to be rough,” said Windham sophomore Sydney Broadbent, who finished second for Windham and 19th with a time of 21:56.44 minutes. “We knew that everybody was running in the same weather and conditions were going to be the same for everybody and in some ways, it could help us because we’ve worked so hard and prepared since July for this. We were ready for it, and we came and fought, and we did it. We all kept fighting and ... kept going, kept pushing, and we put in the work this season and it paid off today. Everybody worked extra hard – we gave it our all, we gave it everything.”
Junior Tayla Peletier finished first for the team with an 18th place finish overall and a 21.56.32 time.
Sophomore Emma Fox finished third for Windham and 47th overall with a 23:40.61 time. Right behind her was senior Elizabeth Bearce with a 23.50.52 finish.
Sophomore Abigail Dumont finished fifth for Windham with a 24:09.41 time; she knocked off more than a minute from her 2022 Regional Championship finish time.
Boys
“It’s a good day to race, with the rain, it cools you off, it makes you feel fine,” said Windham junior Andrew Young who finished first for Windham and dropped over 20 seconds off his 2022 Regional Championship time with a 2023 time of 18:04.92. “Definitely a little slippery ... definitely a good race. As a team, we were really unified; we were hyping each other up, we all felt good. We met our expectations; I was very pleased with my performance. I have to give credit to my team, everything our coaches and our team has done has prepared us for this race.”
Seniors Graden Joly, Jinqi Li and sophomore Gavin Lawler all dropped times. Joly finished second for the team and 35th overall with a time of 18:32.53. Li finished third for Windham with a 19:41.63 time.
Lawler finished fourth for Windham with a time of 19:42.76. He dropped an entire minute off his previous Regional Championship time.
Freshman Mason Bragdon finished fifth for the team in his first ever Regionals Championship race. He had a fantastic time of 19:56.47.
“We think the weather was an asset because we made it so,” said Windham cross-country coach Jeff Riddle. “We needed to work extremely consistently and extremely well together to have a shot to do what we did today, and they responded and did it. I think the biggest thing that's going well is that the girls are a tight, tight true team and the boys are progressing to that end.”
According to Riddle, they will treat the State Championships no differently than the Regional Championships; they will reset and get back into it. States is not a finishing point; it is a goal and that has opportunities of things to qualify beyond there.
The State Championships will take place in Belfast on Saturday, Oct. 28. <
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