It’s lonely out there.

It’s not that the girls are complaining, but running for more than three miles without a teammate – and sometimes without anyone at all – can get a little lonely.

“I am such a social person,” said Dirigo runner Teri Slawek. “I like to be around people and talk.”

Slawek is fortunate – she runs for a school in the Mountain Valley Conference and has one teammate to talk to.

“I don’t know that it is getting better at all,” said Dirigo coach Charlie Maddaus. “In four years, it has actually declined, I think.”

At one time this season, four MVC schools – Dirigo, Lisbon, Telstar and Winthrop – had just one runner on their girls’ cross country team. The number has since risen to two or three at each of those schools except one – Lisbon.

“I am not sure that anyone really has the answer to that,” said Lisbon coach Hank Fuller. “It just seems that whatever we try to get girls out onto the teams isn’t working.”

Staying put

The fact that they are running alone during races, and sometimes at practices, doesn’t dissuade the girls, though.

“It’s a challenge,” said Lisbon runner Nerissa Gross. “Just to be here is fun, and I have tried other things and this gave me the biggest challenge, so I stick with it. I mean, I like it now, but I’d like it more if I had a full team to run with.”

But Gross doesn’t mind going it alone.

“I like to be out there, to be a little different, to be doing my own thing,” said Gross. “It’s the one thing I can truly call my own here right now.”

“You’ll find with the girls that run, particularly with Nerissa, that they are all driven,” said Fuller. “She wants to experience the highest degree of excellence that she can at all levels, and that’s how most of the other girls in the league are, too.”

Slawek finds ways to channel her talkative nature by making friends from other schools.

“My freshman year, I just started talking to people I was running next to on the trails,” said Slawek. “People used to ask me how I ran and talked at the same time like that. I shrugged, and told them I had no clue. It helps to know the other girls in the conference really well.”

Change can happen

It wasn’t long ago that Mandy Ivey of Oxford Hills High School was in a situation similar to the girls in the MVC. During her freshman season, she was the only runner on the Vikings’ girls’ team, and last year she was one of two or three.

“It’s almost strange to have other girls around now,” said Ivey. “Now I am a captain, and there is a whole team there, and I work with them and help them in any way that I can to become better runners.”

This year, though, thanks in part to her success at the state level and to her help in recruiting younger runners, she is on a full team.

“It helps to have been where I was my freshman year,” said Ivey. “I mean, I know I was at a higher level as a freshman than they are, but I have improved in the last two years. I think they can see that and know that if they stick with it, they can get better, too.”

Even in the MVC, where traditionally strong programs from just 15 years ago, like Jay and Livermore Falls, have gone as far as folding their teams, there is a chance to change the trend, at least in the optimistic eyes of the runners.

“There are always new faces hanging around,” said Slawek. “Every year when I think I am going to be the only one left, or one of them, there always seems to be a new face that pops up. Eventually, I think that is going to develop into two or three at a time. At least I hope so.”

For now, though, all they can do is keep running.