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Photos by MARTY OGDEN
(New Milford's Jonathan Davis en route to his victory)
By MARTY OGDEN
New Milford is known as "The Green Wave" but they brought a never-ending tsunami to Woodbury for the 54th Nonnewaug Invitational on Friday afternoon.
It started with junior Jonathan "Stosh" Davis battling Cheshire freshman Brendan Murray for the individual title. Davis cruised to a winning time of 16 minutes, 7.30 seconds. Murray finished second at 16:21.83.
(Cheshire freshman Brendan Murray)
Cheshire tried to steal the team championship with the Rams' Russell Adams (third, 16:31.2) and Mark Fusco (fifth, 16:41.09) also among the first five finishers. But Green Wave's depth overcame Cheshire's heroics. With their five scoring runners in the top 11, New Milford defeated Cheshire, 29-54, along with the rest of the 15-team field. The Green Wave's Gregory Hamell (fourth, 16:31.51), Luke Simmons (sixth, 16:42.98), Richard Grudzwick (seventh, 16:48.86) and Brady Clake (11th, 16:50.71) completed the scoring.
Veteran New Milford coach Chris Bacich stated, "This is about what I expected" and added he "was excited to see the confidence Stosh has been racing with."
On the girls' side it came down to the wire for both the team and individual races.
(Parish Hill's Sabrina Chesters, the girls' winner)
Unranked Southington scored an upset over 11th ranked Avon by two points, 58-60. Parish Hill's Sabrina Chesters pulled away from Avon's Molly Hamel late in the race to take individual honors, crossing the line with a winning time of 19:20.08. Hamel finished as the runner-up in 19:25.27. Rounding out the top five were East Hampton's Sydney Georgiades (third, 19:37.86), Thomaston's Sammi Breier (fourth, 19:43.89) and Lauren Perkowski (fifth, 20:06.72).
Avon had three of its runners among the first eight finishers. The difference-maker appeared to be Southington's fifth runner, Christina Trovato, who finished 16th overall. She was a mere 50 seconds behind her first teammate Jami Pliego in fifth place. To add insult to injury Chesters and Hamel were neck-and-neck most of the race but Chesters was able to pull away on the last hill of the course and win by five seconds.
After the race, Chesters was clearly proud of winning for her school stated she felt "in control of the race the entire way."
While three ranked teams ran at Nonnewaug High School Friday, next weekend should be a much bigger shake up in the polls with both the Wickham Invitational and the Manhattan Invitational in New York being held.
(The start of the boys' race)