AUGUSTA – In a race with so many displaced runners, the MVC girls’ meet was bound to come down to the team with the biggest and tightest pack. On a good day, that team is Monmouth.

Saturday was a very good day.

Lindsay Scirica led the Mustangs’ charge with a sixth place finish and teammates Emily Masi, Madoka Kurihara, Amy Hobson and Becca Irwin followed close behind as Monmouth upended Madison and Wiscasset to win the Mountain Valley Conference girls’ cross country title at the University of Maine at Augusta.

“This is the first race in a while where we’ve had all of the girls together, healthy and able to run,” said Monmouth coach Rick Amero. “They have worked extremely hard to get here and now that we are all together, we are ready to make a run at regionals next week, too.”

Just three MVC teams had enough runners to score in the girls’ team meet, but several schools had at least one runner in the field.

Telstar’s Brianne Bailey, just a freshman, blew away the field with a time of 21:22, a pace of 6:54 per mile, and relegated Lisbon senior Nerissa Gross to second place for the second straight year. Dirigo’s Teri Slawek went out quickly and held on to second place for much of the race before fading to third in the last two-tenths of a mile.

“It wasn’t my best race,” said Bailey. “It was wet out there, and a little slippery.”

Slawek tried to push the pace, and for the first half mile, actually led the race, but Bailey stayed close behind and waited her turn.

“I wasn’t really worried about it too much,” said Bailey. “I came in with a pace I wanted to run and kept that pace throughout the race. She wasn’t too far ahead and then she started to slow down, so I kept the same pace and passed her.”

For Gross, the second place finish was all too familiar.

“Two years running, two second place finishes,” said Gross. “I usually pick it up after the first mile or so, but I wasn’t able to do that today. I don’t really know what it was, but I am used to good mud runs in practice, so I don’t think that was a big deal.”

Zoe Jennings of Hall-Dale and Danielle Hebert of Madison rounded out the top five places in the girls’ race.