RUMFORD – Hannah Allen curled up inside a black, way-too-big-for-her sweatshirt and slumped onto a bench inside the lodge at Black Mountain on Thursday. The room around her bustled. Skiers rushed from table to table, coaches looked for their athletes, and athletes looked for post-race nourishment in the form of fruit, granola bars and, of course, pizza.

Allen sat on her bench, surrounded by friends, but hardly saying a word.

“My mom didn’t really want me to race today,” Allen confessed, grinning shyly toward her mother. “But I knew I had to, to help the team. I had to be out there.”

Her Mt. Blue teammates, their coaches and parents – and yes, even her own mother – are a lot happier now that she did race than they would have been had she not.

Allen, who wasn’t feeling well, finished 11th out of 51 skiers in Thursday’s classical cross country race at the Class A state ski championships in 17:59.8, two places and seven-tenths of a second ahead of Greely’s Jessalyn Steinman (18:00.5). Those two points made the difference, delivering to Mt. Blue another Class A state ski title, the Cougars’ 15th in the last 17 years.

“She’s an amazing girl,” Mt. Blue coach Buzz Davis said of Allen. “She’s tough, she’s a competitor. I’m just so impressed with her, but that’s the kind of athlete she is.”

As expected, Mt. Blue’s alpine contingent was at Black Mountain again Thursday, cheering for their Nordic counterparts. The alpine racers had a less-than-perfect day Wednesday, but it was enough.

“It just goes to show how much every single point matters,” Mt. Blue alpine coach Mark Cyr said.

Allen, after finding out how critical seven-tenths of a second can be, cracked a smile, more out of relief than of joy.

“I actually fell out there,” Allen confessed. “And I almost threw up. I just tried to get some extra double-poling in at the start. That could have helped me out a little bit.”

The Cougars had to hold off a strong charge from the Greely girls, racing in Class A for the first time this season. The Rangers started the day trailing Mt. Blue by 34 points through three events, but they defeated the Cougars by 20 in Tuesday’s freestyle race.

Thursday, Greely clipped Mt. Blue by 32, two short of the 34 it needed.

Freshmen Shelby Aseltine (sixth) and Caitlin Douglass (19th), and junior Meredith Allen (16th) – Hannah’s sister – were the Cougars’ other top finishers.

Not to be outdone, the Mt. Blue boys wrapped up their eighth overall title in 10 tries with relative ease, outdistancing the next closest team – Leavitt Area High School of Turner – 179-295.

But the bigger intrigue in the boys’ race was the chase for the Nordic combined title. The Hornets, led by Lauren Turner and Justin Fereshetian’s 1-2 finish in the freestyle race Tuesday, tied Mt. Blue in that event.

The Cougars placed four skiers in the top eight in the classical race Thursday, though, and clipped Leavitt by six points, 48-54, to earn the Nordic title, too.

“It’s often that 3-4 position that makes the difference,” Davis said. “It’s nice to see that we got a little bit better depth today.”

In a way, Allen and the girls helped the boys out, too.

“Waxing was a bit challenging,” Davis said. “We didn’t quite get it where we wanted for the girls. I didn’t want to make the same mistake twice, and we changed it completely for the boys.”

Leavitt, meanwhile, skied the best it could. Fereshetian, on his birthday, won the classical race, and Turner finished second.

“It doesn’t matter if I’m No. 1 or No. 2,” Fereshetian said. “As long as we’re both up there, that’s what counts.”

Valentin Sierra followed in ninth, and Derek Drouin followed in 16th place for the Hornets, who won last year’s overall title, ending Mt. Blue’s six-year run.

Peter Smith made it a clean sweep on the day for the boys, earning the skimeister title by 27 points over Andrew Baxter of Camden Hills. Anna Vigue of Camden Hills won the girls’ skimeister title Thursday by 19 points over Morgan Burke of Hampden.