Aaron Willingham won the boys’ race with a finishing time of 16:36.14, and Maggie Hickey crossed the line with a finishing time of 21:28.

“They came off a really hard workout on Monday, which was amazing,” Mt. Blue coach Kelley Cullenberg said. “You give them times to shoot for, but it’s not a race, so you wonder if its going to really happen. They were nailing their times. I feel that really helped both the boys and girls to be a little more confident out there today.”

Hickey said running out in front isn’t always the easiest thing to do.

“I thought I did pretty good, it’s a little hard to front-run sometimes without anybody around you,” she said.

At the two-mile mark, she decided to break away from the pack, and she won by 15 seconds.

The Cougars won the boys’ race with five athletes in the top 11.  It was almost a 1-2 finish for Mt. Blue, but Lewiston’s Osman Doorow ran down Dan Lesko for second place by four-tenths of a second.

This isn’t the first time the two have battled it out at the line this year.

“I was okay with it because I did it to him at the (Scott) Laliberte (Invitational),” Lesko said. “It’s not fun to have someone the whole race then get you at the line. He really deserved it, he had a good race today.”

It was the second time Doorow passed him in the race, and earlier his teammate Isaiah Harris also passed Lesko in the woods. Lesko was able to pass them both shortly thereafter.

“He has good leg speed,” Lewiston coach Kim Wettlaufer said of Doorow. “He ran a 4:28, 4:29 mile at the 1600 (meters) last spring, so it didn’t surprise me he could get him. He looked like he still had a little something left. It was a good finish, and Dan (Lesko) looked good too.”

Rounding out the top five were Harris and Harrison Knowlton of Leavitt.

Wettlaufer said this course doesn’t play to Harris’ strength, and it was the first 5K he’s run all season long.

Lewiston finished second overall with 48 points, 17 behind Mt. Blue. Maranacook came in third, followed by Edward Little and Oxford Hills. Leavitt rounded out the six-team race.

On the girls’ side Maranacook won the team event with 34 points, 11 points ahead of Mt. Blue. The Blue Devils came in third with 60 points, followed by Monmouth Academy, Edward Little and Oxford Hills.

“The girls have some depth and some strength,” Maranacook coach Rosalea Kimball said. “They have been doing really well. The boys don’t have the depth, we have the strength, but not the depth.”

Wettlaufer was pleased with the result of the girls’ team.

“We ran much better than we have,” Wettlaufer said. “I think we were third overall, but we will have to see what the scoring is. It was a good showing and we were closer to Maranacook than we were last week.”

There was another battle for second in the girls’ race, as Julia Labbe of Leavitt made up significant time on Hannah Despres of Maranacook on the final lap to beat Despres by three seconds, finishing with a time of 21:43.

“(Julia) could see her coming across the baseball and football field closer to the finish,” Leavitt coach Dustin Williamson said. “She knew she was there, she had her in sight and that probably gave her some extra motivation. She had a great finish kick, a great finish sprint all the way to the finish.”

Rounding out the top five were Megan Charles and River Lisius both of Mt. Blue.

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