The Boothbay Region and Wiscasset high schools’ cross country team had its debut race in Brunswick Sept. 2. The girls and boys teams were shorthanded, but Coach Nick Scott described the meet as a fantastic outing for the start to a promising season. The teams faced Brunswick, Morse, Camden Hills Regional and Medomak Valley Regional high schools.

“Wow, what a start to the regular season we had last night (with) several PRs achieved, some 5ks run for the first time, and lots of fast times.”

The four returning girls – Laura Chapman, Maddie Orchard, Emily Gilliam and Julia Truesdell – all ran lifetime personal records finishing 10th, 14th, 17th and 29th respectively in 22:29, 23:10, 23:27 and 25:07. Chapman took 10 seconds off her fastest time and was nearly six minutes faster than last year’s on the same course. Orchard beat her personal record by nearly two minutes, Truesdell by a minute and a half and Gilliam by nearly 40 seconds. Newcomer Maddie Andreason took 50th in 31:40, a good time for a first-ever 5k race, Scott said.

Though the boys did not blow away their personal records, three achieved sub-20-minute times – an important individual benchmark for a season’s first race. Dominick Dow led his team in 23th with Ryan Clark following close behind in 24th. Their times were 19:19 and 19:25. Payton Blagdon took 27th in his first-ever cross country race with a time of 19:44. Austin Trask, Cleyton Splaine and Ross Gaffney took 31st, 44th and 46th respectively in 20:06, 23:08 and 32:09.

“Ryan has improved considerably over the past year (beating) his finishing time of 21:39 from a year ago. Payton Blagdon broke the 20-minute barrier … a strong start to his high school racing career. Just narrowly missing a sub-20 performance was Austin Trask, who turned in a fine performance.”

The teams will compete next in the Quabacook relays at Morse High School Sept. 10.