MANCHESTER – For one team it was an expectation, for the other, the path was not clear, but regardless of how they got there, both Coe-Brown cross country teams won the Division II title on Saturday at Manchester’s Derryfield Park.
“It was all about team effort,” said Coe-Brown coach Brent Tkaczk, who coaches alongside Tim Cox. “We are all about team. Everything we do. The way we function and the way we train. The way these guys all care about each other and hold each other accountable. That’s the result you’re seeing.”
Both Coe-Brown teams had several runners at the top of the field, with the boys placing four runners in the top eight and the girls placing three in the top 12, but the individual titles were swept by the Merrimack Valley Reynolds sibilings, with senior David winning in 16:44.8 and freshman Sophia conquering the muddy 5K course in 18:32.9.
The results for the Bears are also an indication of a program on the rise back to the top of D-II. The boys won three championships in a row between 2014-16, but settled for second last year behind Oyster River. The girls won six straight championships from 2010-15, but finished second to Souhegan the last two years.
“The boys’ goals were very clear. They wanted to win this year,” Tkaczyk said. “The girls … that was like a bowl of soup that needed to be mixed, we didn’t know where this season was going.”
Junior Dawson Dubois (16:49) finished third, while sophomores Luke Tkaczyk (16:55), Wyatt Mackey (17:09) and Logan Mihelich (17:13) finished fourth, sixth and eighth, respectively.
Senior Gavyn Lewis (24th, 17:43) and sophomores Patrick Hill (33rd, 18:09) and Carter Sylvester (34th, 18:10) rounded out the boys’ team.
“We knew (Oyster River) was going to come out and try to impose their will on us,” Dubois said, “but we knew if we just stuck with the plan and listened to our coaches it would be alright. …We’ve built this brotherhood. I’m super excited. The sky is the limit for us.”
The journey the girls team went on was much less straight forward. At the end of last season it wasn’t clear if all the varsity runners would be returning this year. Even though everyone eventually made the decision to return, it still wasn’t clear how the team would fare, or who the top seven would be.
Sophomores Addison Cox (fourth, 19:17) and Ella Malone (10th, 19:51), and junior Abby O’Connor (12th, 20:16) ran on the team last year and were consistently the top three this year, but it was the efforts of the middle and bottom of the lineup, sophomore Miranda Compton (23rd, 21:07), freshman Amelia Edmonds (25th, 21:16), sophomore Tessa Millette (27th, 21:16) and senior Autumn Graham (45th, 22:05) that gave Coe-Brown the extra boost it needed.
“Miranda, she’s really the reason we won as far as when you look at points,” coach Tkaczyk said. “She wanted to close that gap on Ella and the other girls followed her. Tess, our sixth runner, had a great race. She was right there with our fifth runner.”
It wasn’t until a month ago that the plan started to come together when Coe-Brown finished second at the Black Bear Invitational to ConVal by two points.
“About a month ago we started to see who we were,” coach Tkaczyk said. “There was no dominant team this year. We could see that we were going to start to put together a group that would be competitive. A lot of the time you know what you before the season starts. This year it took us the whole season to get this good. Building this momentum is something that came together all at the right time.”
Another factor of the Division II race was the weather and course conditions. After several hours of freezing rain and the Division I and III championships having already been run on the same course, footing became problematic.
“As awful as this weather was, we trained for it. We knew it would be this way,” coach Tkaczyk said. “The footing was bad, obviously, we told the kids, ‘you’re going to fall, but when you do you don’t feel bad for yourself and don’t act shocked. You get up.’ ”
The Coe-Brown boys only lost by 10 points to Oyster River last year, and it was another again, but this time the Bears had the upperhand, scoring 44 points, topping Oyster River’s 61.
Hanover (97), Souhegan (144), ConVal (154) and Sanborn (167) rounded out the top six teams advancing to next weekend’s Meet of Champions at Mines Fall in Nashua.
Bow (205) and Merrimack Valley (224) finished seventh and eighth, just missing the cut.
On the girls’ side, Coe-Brown’s 62 points bested ConVal (84), with Souhegan (100), Oyster River (122), Hanover (131) and Milford (166) also advancing to MOC.
“There were a lot of teams that had a lot of potential in D-II,” Cox said. “We’ve been battling with ConVal all year. Souhegan has had a great history of showing up at state championships in the last few years. We were all really aware of what shirts we needed to look out for and everyone on the team did a great job of that today.”
David Reynolds ran nearly an identical time to the 16:44.8 he ran last year (when he finished fourth) to top the field this year, although he was challenged by Coe-Brown’s Dubois and Tkaczyk, and Oyster River’s Andrew O’Brien (16:49).
“The course was torn up, the first few races really did a number on it,” Reynolds said. “I was hoping to put a little more distance between us early, but it didn’t go that way. I just tried to keep hope running into the last (200 meters) and started to pull away a little bit.”
Freshman Sophia Reynolds, the victor of numerous major invitationals already, knocked off the defending champion, Manchester West’s Julia Robitaille, who set the course record last year.
“Right off the start (Robitaille) tried to pull away,” Reynolds said. “She had a few meters of a gap starting out, but before the mile I just tried to shut that down and get right down on her shoulder and going into the hills (in the second mile). I tried to pull away and it worked.”
David’s twin and Sophia’s older brother, Matt Reynolds, finished ninth in 17:20 and John Stark’s Brandon Langdon (12th, 17:26) also qualified for the Meet of Champions by finishing in the top 25.
Kirpal Demian (29th, 17:57), Colin Lessard (35th, 18:11), Sam Berube (36th, 18:13), Gabe Neff (39th, 18:25) and Ben Neff (73rd, 19:40) were Bow’s top five, while Ethan Dodenhoff (55th, 19:07), Connor Butt (63rd, 19:18) and Christian Oglesby (103rd, 20:52) rounded out MV’s top five.
Langdon and Erik Hilyard (87th, 20:16) were the top two runners for 15th-place John Stark and David Testerman (94th, 20:34) led 19th-place Pembroke.
On the girls’ side, MV’s Emma York (19th, 20:46) qualified for MOC, while Madisyn Garrity (54th, 22:31), Maizie Thurber-Wells (94th, 24:25) and Katherine Butt (105th, 24:56) rounded out the top five for eighth-place Pride.
Sarah Ciotti (64th, 22:51) led 15th-place Bow and Charlotte Corbitt (103rd, 22:55) led 18th-place Pembroke.