by Ryan Mosher
After great success in the Patroon Conference over the last ten plus years, the Berlin Cross Country program has gone to the next level, switching over to the WASAREN League, facing bigger and more successful schools in the process. Both boys and girls teams have started out the season strong and look to contend for the league titles. On Tuesday both teams ran at Hoosic Valley High School, taking on Schuylerville and Granville.
Schuylerville, one of the other top boys teams in the league, was looking for revenge after the Mountaineers knocked them off earlier this season. Schuylerville took the top three spots for almost the entire race until Alex French and Llew Palmer of Berlin were able to break into the third and fourth spots.
Unfortunately, Schuylerville’s fourth and fifth place runners would finish fast enough to edge Berlin 26-30. After French and Palmer, Conner Hoyt finished sixth and Erik Viner seventh for the Mountaineers. Rocco Farano finished tenth to round out the Berlin scoring. Evan Dawes finishing eleventh, Doug Hoard finishing fifteenth and Mat Rokjer at eighteenth were the other top twenty finishers for Berlin. While Berlin fell to Schuylerville, they knocked off Granville 15-44.
The girls team defeated Hoosic Valley 27-30 and fell to Schuylerville 21-34. Kayleigh Corrado led the way with a fifth place finish, followed immediately by Hannah French. Isabel Fussel, Lydia Shorter and Emily Olsen took twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth places, followed by Ann Marie Guerdan in sixteenth place.
The teams compete this weekend at the Maple Hill Invitational at Maple Hill High School.