A proud St. Dom’s girls’ team christened the 3.1-mile course with a victory on a muggy and wet Tuesday afternoon.

“It was so cool having our first home meet,” said Sirois, who finished first with a winning time of 21 minutes, 28 seconds. “Well, I personally love our course. Mt. Agony is a little surprise in the middle. I always feel pretty good running up that hill.

“I mean when you are finishing a race in the pouring rain, you really don’t care, because you are pushing so hard and your feet are flying that you don’t have to worry about how wet the ground is.”

Scaling Mt. Agony wasn’t a problem for the St. Dom’s team, which finished with a winning score of 19 points, followed by Winthrop with 51. Gardiner had 45 points.

The St. Dom’s girls’ team took the top-three positions, with Sirois leading the way followed by Ella Brown (21:50) and Megan D’Alessandro (23:10). The Saints’ Clementine Headley (24:57) finished seventh and Dasha Fons (25:19) took ninth.

“Well, Sydney had a great race. I am really happy we had a good showing at our home meet, Brown said. “I love our course.”

St. Dom’s coach Josh Brown was proud of Sirois and Brown for leading the Saints to victory.

“It’s great to see our girls finish one-two in this meet,” Brown said. “We designed it (course) ourselves and we like it. We are happy to have all these teams come here and compete.”

Bree Sautter of Lisbon (23:23) finished fourth and Winthrop’s Jada Choate (23:56) was sixth. Rocio Vance (25:20) raced in with a 10th-place finish.

Harriman is tops again

Nicholas Harriman (17:29) broke from the pack later in the race and finished first, leading Lisbon to victory with 44 points. St. Dom’s and Winthrop were close by with 51 points each, followed by Hall-Dale (70).

This time, Harriman was running on a full belly on the Saints’ new course.

“Actually, (I ran) better than last time. My stomach didn’t hurt as much. I had eaten a little bit, kept me sustained throughout the race,” Harriman said.

Harriman said he was right at home on the Saints’ new course.

“Truthfully, it reminds me a lot of my course,” Harriman said. “But Mt. Agony is a challenge. If you don’t work hard, it’s tough. You run it twice — once before the one mile and once in the middle of the second lap. It’s a very steep, long uphill. I figured that’s where anybody would catch me. So I figured I would have to push really hard up the hill.”

“He ran well today. He ran what he wanted to do today,” Lisbon coach Jeremy Williams said of Harriman.

Williams also liked St. Dom’s design of the course.

“It’s a good course. It is a new course for us,” Williams said. “This the first time they had it.”

Winthrop’s Jesse Stevens (19:04) followed Harriman to the winner’s circle. And like Harriman, Stevens found the course impressive.

“I really like this course,” Stevens said. “It is a little bit easy for me to run. I liked it a lot.

“The first lap, I was doing fine. When I got up on the hill, a little bit harder. The second lap, I felt a little bit tired. But I feel like I have a lot of energy.”

“(Jesse was) pumped, really pumped We told him to get out there and get after it,” Winthrop coach Ed Van Tassel said. “So he did it. So he took advantage of the opportunity. He’s pumped. He wanted to win.”

Van Tassel found the new course a new and refreshing challenge for his Ramblers.

“It’s nice to go to a different venue,” Van Tassel said. “The way the schedule works, we go to the same courses every year. So St. Dom’s said they were going to have the course ready, and we said, ‘Hey, we will come check it out.’ So it gets us off our trails and gives new scenery. They did a great job hosting us and putting it on.”

Winthrop’s Jacob Hickey (19:13) finished fourth and Will Vance (19:14) took fifth.

St. Dom’s Diego Villamarin finished third with at 19:10.

“I felt really good at the beginning, but I slowed down a little bit,” Villamarin said “It (course) was nice. I actually knew it.”

With all the rave reviews about the course, St. Dom’s athletic director Keith Weatherbie couldn’t help but be proud of his staff and the coach’s who designed the course.

“First time we ever had a meet here,” Weatherbie said. “The Browns have done a fantastic job getting everything organized and doing a great course. We will keep working on it and make it better. Big day for St. Dom’s.”