Viking boys win opening XC meet

    The cross country season officially got underway for the Caribou varsity teams Saturday as they participated in a competition held at the University of Maine at Orono.
The Maine Open was the event and featured three other schools — Presque Isle, George Stevens Academy of Blue Hill and Hermon.
The Caribou boys scored the victory by tallying a meet-low 26 points. The Viking girls took second with 30, behind GSA’s 25.
Leading the way for the Caribou boys was the one-two combination of freshman Evan Desmond and junior Elijah Verhoff. Desmond placed second overall out of 41 competitors with a time of 18 minutes and 9.59 seconds on the five-kilometer course, while Verhoff was third and less than 12 seconds back at 18:21.69.
The race winner was Hermon senior Josh Zapsky, who finished in 18:08.35, just over a second ahead of Desmond.
Caribou took positions six through 11 as well. Junior Lukas Lagasse (19:02.06), senior Mitchell St. Peter (19:03.06), junior Chathu Karunasiri (19:03.75), freshman Daniel Randolph (19:05.21), junior Caleb Hunter (19:15.26) and junior Tsion MacLeod (19:46.38) finished in consecutive order.
For the girls, sophomore Madeline Gudde had the Vikings’ top finish, coming in second place in 22:20.86. Robyn Larrabee, a senior, was fourth in 22:39.91, while senior Chelsea Haney was sixth in 22:52.
The team’s other scorers were freshman Anya O’Meara, eighth in 23:00.26, and senior Nerissa Larrabee, 10th in 23:03.49. The race featured 42 competitors.
Hanna Gutow of GSA was the individual winner in 22:12.07.
At Fort Kent last Wednesday, local Class C schools met for their second meet of the season.
The Washburn girls scored 15 points as the only complete team. Emmy Churchill placed first for the second consecutive meet, winning this one on a three-mile course by fashioning at time of 23:12. Teammate Mackenzie Worcester was next in 24:12 and Marianne Helton took the fourth slot in 26:13.
Ally Johnson of Limestone-MSSM was fifth out of 17 runners in 26:50.
The Beaver boys scored 44 points to finish behind Fort Kent, which had a perfect 15. Matt Toussaint was the race champion in 17:50, with 14 other runners competing.
Coming in sixth overall was Washburn’s Michael Ericson, whose time was 21:39. Devon Maynard of the Beavers came in seventh in 21:51.
Dalton Ganonico was Limestone-MSSM’s lone competitor, finishing in 30:26 and placing 14th.
Caribou will next compete on Saturday as they travel for the Ellsworth Invitational, which is slated to begin at 11 a.m.