BELFAST – Lewiston’s Mohamed Noor has been in the United States for less than a year. Raised in Somalia near the Ethiopian border, the senior has certainly come a long way in the sport of cross country.

His victory at Saturday’s Festival of Champions race was amazing, considering his first official race wasn’t until August.

His first “unofficial” race came last winter in gym class. Teammate Robbie Leeman has been one of the team’s top runners.

During the winter, he keeps in great shape playing hockey for the Blue Devils.

Sporting his running shoes, taking the bragging rights when his gym class ran the mile run was supposed to be an easy feat.

“I took off pretty fast,” said Leeman.

“No one runs hard in gym class. I thought I was going to have an easy time. After the third lap, he was right with me. He beat me by two seconds.”

To make the accomplishment more amazing was Noor’s footwear.

“He had basketball shoes on,” said Leeman, “and they weren’t even tied. They were loose. It was crazy.”

Leeman called Putnam and told him about the new kid who could really run.

From then on, Leeman dogged his classmate to go out for cross country as did Noor’s cousin, former Blue Devil and current University of Maine runner Bashir Mohamed.

“Bashir told me he would get Mohamed out for cross country,” said Putnam. “Bashir calls me twice a week to get updates on him.”

Noor told Leeman during the final week of school last spring that he would run cross country.

The rest is becoming history.

Cougars depleted

The Mt. Blue girls’ 24th place finish in Belfast is not indicative of how they’ve run this fall. Top runner Silver Hunt didn’t make the trip. The Cougars raced without two others from their top five. Lindsey Keenan is injured while Marjorie Hardy had family commitments.

“We have to fight through those things,” said Mt. Blue coach Kelley Cullenberg whose temporarily depleted team recently took a second-place finish at a recent eight-team race in Turner. “At Leavitt the girls knew they had to step it up. They raced well. They just have to hang together.”

A pleasant surprise for the boys’ team has been senior Peter Smith. At last year’s Belfast race, Smith was the 11th Mt. Blue runner in the unseeded race, finishing in a time of 23:46. That time was good enough for 313th place overall.

Saturday he finished 35th with a time of 17:33.

“Peter Smith is just phenomenal,” said Cullenberg. “He’s been our number three runner all year. Last year he was basically a JV runner whose goal was 21 minutes.”

Winthrop surging

Winthrop began last week on the outside looking in for the top 10 coaches’ poll. But finishing fifth overall in Belfast might change that. Tor O’Brien and Danny Soltan both turned in top-seven finishes and have been a lethal 1-2 punch for the Ramblers this fall in their quest to unseat Lisbon for the Mountain Valley Conference crown.

Winthrop finished ahead of Scarborough, Falmouth, Caribou and Ellsworth. All four teams were ranked in the top 10 poll.

“I would hope we’d be in the top 10 now,” said Winthrop coach Jay Lindsay.

As well they should.