The final week of the high school cross country regular season didn’t necessarily hold a lot of surprises, but it did offer some fantastic farewells and perhaps some tantalizing hints of what may lie in store when the big meets start next weekend.

The season went out with a bang with Friday’s Mt. Blue Relays. Eighteen schools converged in Farmington for the fun finale, with the Bangor boys (1:00:47) and Mt. Ararat girls (1:11:10) winning the 5×2-mile race.

Mt. Blue’s girls finished second, three minutes behind the Eagles, followed by Waterville, Brewer and Winslow. Mt. Ararat’s “B” team finished sixth.

Bangor eclipsed Mt. Ararat in just over 40 seconds to win the boys’ race, followed by Mt. Blue, Brewer and Maranacook.

Waterville’s Bethanie Brown had the top individual girls’ time at 12:37, outlasting Addie Cullenberg of Mt. Blue and Kelly Lynch of Mt. Ararat (13:59). Leavitt’s Maddie Weigman (14:04) and Mt. Ararat’s Lauren McNett (14:06) rounded out the top five.

Chase Brown of Boothbay finished the course in 11 minutes flat to win the boys’ race, followed by Andy Reifman-Packett of Mt. Ararat (11:17), Kelby Mace of Maranacook (11:33) and Justin Tracy (11:34) and Sully Jackson (11:36) of Mt. Blue.

All of those runners will be back on the course for the KVAC championships hosted by Cony next Saturday.

One Last Mountain

The Mountain Valley Conference warmed up for its conference meet Oct. 15 with its last regular season meet at Madison Wednesday and the Telstar boys finished their perfect league season in style.

The Rebels placed five in the top 1s en route to 28 points, followed by Winthrop (58), Madison (71) and Hall-Dale (76).

Not surprisingly, Madison’s Matt McLintock won the final home meet of his extraordinary career, breaking the tape at 15:45, which was 1:37 ahead of the pack.

Josef Holt-Andrews led the Rebel charge with a second-place time of 17:22, followed by Ben Lewis 30 seconds behind. Adam Mahar (fifth), Bronson Dean (sixth) and Matthew Keane (12th) rounded out the scoring for the Rebels.

Winthrop posted three of the top eight times, led by Mark Hachey (fourth), Ben Allen (seventh) and Dylan Berney (eighth). Dirigo’s Ethan Cantin (14th) and Seth Tacheny (17th) had strong individual performances.

Jessica Conant of Dirigo was tops among local runners in the girls’ race, finishing third, 14 seconds ahead of Telstar’s Gabi Stone.

The MVC conference meet is Oct. 15 at UMaine-Augusta.

No Doubting Thomas

Lisbon’s Meagan Thomas prepared for the MVCs and put an exclamation on her career simultaneously by setting a new record at her home course, Beaver Park, last Wednesday. Thomas finished in 21 minutes in her final home meet.

Angie Bulgin and Abby Roy backed up Thomas with top 10 finishes but it wasn’t enough to overcome the depth of St. Dom’s, which had Ellen Tuttle, Sarah Small, Meagan Ring, Callie Greco and Emily Carney score within the top 15 for the three-point win. Monmouth finished third, led by Jordyn Mann, Tiffany Pease, Christine Kahl and India Pickett.

The Lisbon boys defended their home turf with a convincing victory over Boothbay and Monmouth.

Boothbay’s Alex Owen took individual honors with a time of 18:37, but the Greyhounds placed five in the top 12 — Ben Kates (second), Joe Daigle (third), Andrew Smith (fifth), Jeff Willey (eighth) and Kody Priddle (12th). Monmouth’s Ben Bailey, Dylan Thombs and Stewart Buzzell took fourth, seventh and ninth, respectively.

Locals Fare Well at FOC

The Mt. Blue girls were the top local finishers in last Saturday’s Festival of Champions at Troy Howard Middle School in Belfast. The Cougars overcame the rain, mud and wind to take sixth place out of 40 teams from all over the state as well as Vermont, Rhode Island and Nova Scotia.

The Cougars placed five runners amongst the top 100 scorers, led by Addie Cullenberg, who finished 12th out of 457 finishers while completing the 5k course in 20:31. Katherine Gunther (41st), Louisa Stancioff (53rd), Maryam Norton (59th) and Sarah Wade (100th) also contributed to the scoring.

Lewiston, with four runners in the top 100, finished 19th, led by Faith Shaw (60th), Nicole Court-Menendez (85th), Taylor True (92nd) and Mana Abdi (96th).

Other top locals were Lisbon’s Meagan Thomas (64th overall), Oxford Hills’ India Lucas (81st), Monmouth’s Tiffany Pease (97th), and Telstar’s Gabi Stone (104th). Kennebunk’s Abbey Leonardi defended her meet title, and won her third in four years, with a top time of 18:16.55, well off of her meet record of 17:58.35 of last year. Mount Desert Island won the team title.

On the boys’ side, Lewiston finished ninth overall out of 50 teams and sixth among Maine teams, placing three harriers — Mohamed Barre (25th), Mohamed Awil (35th) and Kevin Lavertu (65th) — in the upper echelon of the 637 finishers.

Telstar finished right behind Lewiston in 10th and tops among Maine’s Class C teams. Josef Holt-Andrews finished eighth with a time of 16:55.72, a little over 47 seconds behind Madison’s Matt McClintock, who defended his FOC title. Ben Lewis (27th) and Adam Mahar (74th) also cracked the top 100 for the Rebels.

The other top local performances were by Winthrop’s Kameron Souza (18th) and Mark Hachey (68th), Mt. Blue’s Justin Tracy (22nd) and Sully Jackson (31st) and Edward Little’s Justin LeClair (45th) and Luc Bourget (85th).

Falmouth won the team title.