Whitman-Hanson dons pair of cross country crowns
When Livvy Kates first heard Whitman-Hanson would be rejoining the Patriot League after spending the past several decades in the Atlantic Coast League, she welcomed the South Shore juggernaut that won both boys and girls Eastern Mass. cross country titles last year.
“I was actually excited because I knew it would bring more competition,” the Hingham girls coach said on Tuesday before suffering her first loss of the season, 21-40, to Whitman-Hanson, conceding the league title for the first time in three seasons. “I knew it would be tough, but that’s OK.”
W-H’s boys cross country team (10-0) also won the Patriot League title against Hingham (9-2), avoiding a tie with Duxbury at the top of the charts and giving coach Kevin Black his 47th league championship during his 31-year tenure.
“We’re happy to be back in the league competing against our neighbors,” Black said after his boys' 19-41 victory over Hingham. “We renewed the rivalry. It was hard to have rivalries in the Atlantic Coast League. This is a natural rivalry.”
W-H seniors Pat Taft and Pat Egan and sophomore Tyler Sullivan crossed the finish line together with Taft (16 minutes 18 seconds) finishing one second faster than his teammates.
“We crossed as straight as we could,” Egan said. “[Sullivan’s] a sophomore and we’re seniors so that was pretty impressive
The league title wasn’t guaranteed, however, for the Panthers boys. Black gambled on Saturday by running and winning the 49th annual Catholic Memorial Invitational at Franklin Park in Boston. The short layoff, however, didn’t have an adverse effect.
“We’re all pretty confident doing what coach says,” Egan said. “We were warming up and said ‘Wow we feel fine even though we raced the other day.’”
Racing against the Panthers for the first time, Hingham’s No. 1 runner — senior Drew Morrissey — finished fourth overall in 16:22. He conceded he was worried when he heard W-H was rejoining the league and said they are as good as advertised.
“We ran the mile five (minutes) flat and then their top three just stayed together the whole way,” Morrissey said. “I was right there with them until the 21/2-mile mark. They got away from me and seemed to coast in. If I didn’t have them, I probably wouldn’t have pushed so hard in the second mile.”
Black thought it was Morrissey who did the pushing in the first mile.
“That was a blistering first mile,” Black said. “That was courtesy of Hingham. They really pushed the pace.”
Even though a short rain storm set in just as the boys were coming in and the girls were heading out, Hingham senior Shauna McNiff still managed to tie the course record of 18:54, which had been set the previous week by Heather Connick of Pembroke.
“They are really talented, their top girls came in under 20 (minutes) and that says a lot about their program,” McNiff said before also admitting she was nervous about W-H. “I always heard of them and they are always in the paper. It’s always good to have competition because if you don’t have competition, you come to a standstill as a runner.”
The Panthers’ top girl on Tuesday, Emily Regan (19:42), likes the idea of being respected.
“It’s good to be part of a team everybody knows about,” said Regan, who had a hard time navigating the rain-soaked course. “At the beginning it was hard to see, but it slowly stopped and I got used to it.”
The next three runners to finish behind Regan wore Panther black — Caitlin Ryan (19:49), Kelci Sullivan (19:51) and Kaley Mientkiewicz (19:52). The league championship was W-H’s girls second in a row.
“We knew that McNiff would probably break the course record and we expected to go two, three, four and five, which is an automatic win, and that’s what we did,” W-H coach Keith Erwin said.
The two teams will meet again on Tuesday in the Patriot League meet at Silver Lake. They will run separately in the Eastern Mass. meet on Nov. 8 at Franklin Park, as Hingham is in Division 3 and the Panthers are Division 2.
Kates didn’t discount their chances to exact revenge in the league meet next Tuesday.
“We’ll see,” she said. “Anything is possible with a bigger meet and invitational scoring and more runners displacing (each other).”
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