Four-Peat at Western Mass for Amherst Regional Girls Cross Country

The faces may have changed, but the result was the same. The Amherst Regional High School girls’ cross country team won their fourth consecutive Western Massachusetts Class A title at Stanley Park in Westfield on Saturday, October 25. Tight pack running, with the top five runners finishing within a 35-second spread and the top seven within 43 seconds of each other, enabled the Hurricanes to edge out second place Northampton 32 to 38.  Minnechaug Regional High School was a distant third with 84 points. 

Genevieve Dole was the first finisher from the Hurricanes, finishing third and completing the 5k course in 20 minutes 15 seconds. She was followed by Ella Austin (fifth place, 20:20), Lily Pope (sixth, 20:22), Nina Holden (seventh, 20:25), and Ella Jamate (11^th, 20:51). Marit MacDonald (12th, 20:51) and Quynh Ly (16th, 20:58) completed the top seven for Amherst. Northampton High School’s Mairead O’Neill won the race in a time of 18:37. Full results here.

Three of the top five runners from last year’s championship team graduated. Co-coach Ron Jacobs said, “One of the really impressive things about this team is that we were able to reload so quickly after last year, where we graduated four of our seven varsity runners. Ella Austin was not on the team last year–she is a track runner who specializes in the 200 and 400, yet she’s dropped four minutes [from her 5k time] already and was our second-fastest runner at the meet. Nina Holden was a softball player last year who joined the track team for the first time in Spring 2025 and is new to cross country.”

The team next competes in the West-Central divisional meet at Northfield Mountain on Saturday, November 8 to determine qualifiers for the District 2 State Championship on November 15 at Fort Devens. “(We are) looking forward to the state championship,” Jacobs said, “We will face some very tough competition from Westwood (the defending state champions), Canton, and Boston Latin. It promises to be a closely-fought battle, and the team that wins is going to be the one that races the best on the day. We’ll definitely be in the mix. I like our chances.”

Amherst Boys Finish Second
The Amherst Regional boys’ cross country team finished in second place at the Western Mass meet, with Longmeadow winning the meet. Amherst had 49 points to Longmeadow’s 40. The Hurricane’s Calvin Miller won the boys’ race with a time of 15:44. The other four Amherst scorers all broke 17:00. Peter Nedau ran 16:07 (seventh place), Nico Lisle ran 16:18 (10^th place), Sam Woodruff ran 16:48 (14^th place), and Calvin Cusick ran 16:57 (17^th place). Northampton High School finished third in the team race with 94 points. Full results here.