9-7-12
Friday was another hot and humid day at Twin Brooks in Cumberland. This was the first full distance (5k) race of the season for the NYA girls and this course in particular is a great place to get a benchmark since it will also be the site of the Western Maine Regional Class C Championships in late October. Twin Brooks is a course full of wooded trails with rolling hills that opens with a long slight hill from the start and finishes with a steady downhill to the finish line. All of the girls met or exceeded many of their personal goals and expectations as well as the ones set for the team.
Hannah Austin ’15 led the way for the Panthers once again finishing 3rd in the race against a strong field. After a fast first half mile Hannah was able to stay strong all the way through the finish to post her best ever time on the course (21:48) just seconds off of a huge barrier (breaking under 7 min/mi average pace – her average was 7:02). Kate Hilscher ’16 ran a smart race from the start this week and the results showed – Kate ran 30 seconds faster than last week over a longer course and also was just seconds off of the 25 min. barrier running 25:02. Next up for NYA was Ellis ’15 who ran a time equal to her time at the very end of the season last year on the same course and, in the process, really worked to improve the middle of her race. Her time of 26:36 was a minute faster than last week. Abbie Hinchman ’15 was next across the line running a phenomenal race through 2 miles (the goal for the day) with a strong average time. 
Her time of 28:34 was also almost a minute faster than she ran last week, again over a longer course! Morganne Elkins ’16 and Jesse Catir ’15 ran the majority of the race side by side and following the team trend finished about 1 minute ahead of last week with Jesse finding the extra reserves at the finish to sprint all the way to the line.
As a team the girls just missed beating 3rd place Poland and finished 4th overall. Next week we hope to be back to full strength and have our full contingent of runners over at Pratt’s Brook in Yarmouth. If you are curious – check out the full results and photos from the meet
