2025 New England Girls Preview

New Englands Meet Hub

Meet Information

The 90th New England Cross Country Championships are Saturday at Thetford Academy in Belfast, ME.   All New England states except Massachusetts will be competing.  Each state is allowed 6 teams and any other individual placing in the top twenty five of their respective state meet.  The girls race first at 11:30am and the boys are slated to take off at 12:15pm.  NH always stands united in our friendly competition with the other New England states!  So wear your NHCC shirts!  Cheer for one another!  We will be there snapping pics, recording races and conducting interviews!!!

In this spirit, we will have a few guests involved from other states this weekend contributing.  Scott Bliss, long time coach of Champlain Valley, has penned quite the comprehensive preview.  Since leaving coaching, he has is web master of a free website to truly cover Vermont High School Cross Country (sound familiar?).  With his permission, his preview is posted below.  Please check out his site!  It genuinely reminds us of, well, us!  He brings experience from a coaching career which included numerous state and New England titles as well as multiple trips to Nike Cross Nationals.  Thanks Scott!

VTHSXC

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By Scott Bliss

Qualifying Teams! (Speed Ratings Courtesy of Tully Runners)

Speed ratings for top 7(if available) are from New England Qualifying Meets – Maine had to be estimated based on Festival of Champions/State Meet times

Vermont:

CVU – 128,123, 121, 102, 96, 94 and 76

New Hampshire:

Hanover – 124, 116, 115, 112, 107, 96 and 95

Connecticut:

Glastonbury – 137, 104, 104, 97, 94, 89, 63 and 51

Rhode Island:

Cumberland – 130, 119, 117, 114, 111, 92 and 36

LaSalle Academy – 115, 114, 113, 106, 103, 99 and 96

Maine:

Any preview of a New Englands at Thetford needs to start with the course first. It is VERY challenging to know what may happen on a course like Thetford.  An easy metric to show how challenging this course can be is to use the Milesplit XC Course Rating which tells a 15:00 5ker to add :52 seconds to their time! Any mistakes that are made on this course can be multiplied because the course never really gives you a chance to fully recover. This is why it is very hard to make good predictions on any race at Thetford. Ok…there’s my excuse if anything that I say ends up being completely wrong! It is going to be interesting to see if some teams choosing not to attend the Woods Trail Invitational earlier in the season will be a mistake. The more you get to experience this course the better prepared you will be for it. This is a course that you need to be engaged and focused at all times to run it well.

The team race would seem to be between two teams, CVU and Hanover. Both are ranked in the top 5 in the Dyestat NXR Northeast Regional rankings and both ran very well at their state meets. Another interesting team to keep an eye on is Cumberland from RI. They just popped a great race at their State Meet in Ponaganset and, somewhat surprisingly, won pretty easily over LaSalle Academy who had been ranked #1 in the state in their last rankings. Maybe it shouldn’t have been as big of a surprise as Cumberland did finish 4th in the RI Class championships the weekend before even though they were running without 3 of their top 7 runners. LaSalle Academy can not be overlooked as they won their Class championship a couple of weeks ago with only 21 points. A dark horse would be Glastonbury of CT who won the CT State Championship and is a regular at the front of the New England pack.

CVU (VT#1) is most likely the favorite. They have run well all season and have beaten top 25 Nationally ranked teams on different weekends. They have the resume to back up the favorite title. This will be the Redhawks third time running at Thetford this season and that experience could benefit them greatly. They ran a great race at their State Championship a couple of weeks ago being led by seniors (individual title 19:15), Lydia Donahue(2nd 19:28), Audrey Neilson (4th 19:36) and Isabelle Gravina-Budis (9th 20:33). Rounding out their scoring was sophomore Madeleine Deyo in 11th place in 20:50 and another sophomore not far behind Livi Neilson in 12th place in 20:57. The strength of their team is clearly the power of that trio in the front end of their pack. Crum, Donahue and Neilson have proven over time that they are ready when the pressure is on and their performances in past state meets, NE championships and NXR regionals have shown that. They are battle hardened and should be prepared to put their best foot forward on Saturday. The wild card is Zoe McNabb. Zoe is a senior who has been running inside of their top 3 during parts of the season but has been a little dinged up over the last month. She is racing New Englands and if she ends up being able to hang with their top 3 it will make beating this team very challenging. If there is an area that can be exploited it could be the gap back to their 4 or 5 if a team is able to compact their entire top 5 high enough in the race order. That is easier said than done but the way Hanover and Cumberland both ran last weekend it looks like they may be able to accomplish that on the right day.

Hanover (NH#1) has just been improving all season. They really put it all together last weekend in the NH Meet of Champions. Hanover was led by senior Megan Faris (3rd 18:08), junior Aria Deeb (7th 18:33), senior Millie Larrick (8th 18:35) and senior Lila Muirhead (10th 18:46). Junior Alice Bell closed out their scoring in 14th place in 18:59. Their 51 second spread from 1 to 5 could be something which can put a scare into CVU because their 1 to 5 spread was 1:35 at their state meet. It could come down to how close the Hanover top 4 can stay to the top 4 CVU runners. If there is too big of a gap between the Hanover 1-3 runners and CVU’s top 3, it may not matter if their compression is a little smaller. The one thing that Hanover does have which some of the other teams in the race don’t have is experience with the course. They have raced on the course this season and are not that far away for them to come to the course to pre run it before this race. They also have raced CVU this season, so they will have an idea who they are racing against. All of these factors could contribute to an upset in the making.

Cumberland (RI#1) has to be a part of the conversation after their race this past Saturday. They ran a great team race and had a 1-5 spread of :56 seconds and that is the type of spread that will be needed to have a chance at this championship. Cumberland was led by sophomore Cecelia Ludwig (1st 18:17), senior Charlie McCue (3rd 18:50), junior Gabriella Stothoff (6th 18:57), freshman Natalie Crawford (9th 19:07) and junior Anna Bianchi (12th 19:13). The only concern could be that their 6th runner is back a bit which doesn’t give them a wide margin of error if one of their top 5 is off on Saturday. By looking at past results when comparing teams which have run Thetford and then run at Ponaganset, the time difference can be around 45 seconds to 1 1/2 minutes slower at Thetford. That would put Cumberland in the range of what CVU just ran at their state meet. This is a team to definitely keep your eye on.

LaSalle Academy (RI) and Glastonbury (CT) look like they need things to go right for them to have a chance in this race against the top 3 teams. LaSalle did score 21 points in their class race championships but Cumberland ran without 3 of their top 7. Their 1-5 spread of :35 seconds is very impressive, but the issue is they are behind all of the other teams top 3 at that point. They have to close down the gap to the other teams top 3 runners to be in the mix. Glastonbury is led by sophomore Lauren Parrett who won the Woods Trail Invitational at Thetford earlier this  season. They have experience on the course because of that, but their 1-5 spread will need to improve significantly to have a shot at the team title. 

This looks like an exciting race and it may be challenging to know who the winner is before the results are released. It will definitely be important for each team to keep their gaps as small as possible and get every spot possible at the line. Sometimes a second or two can either gain a team multiple points or lose a team multiple points. The top 3 teams, at least, seem to be very close and this should make for a very exciting team race. For the winning team, they really are going to have to get out because of the importance of the start on this course and then be able to continue to monitor their effort so that they do not go past their limits. This could come down to which team is best prepared for the very challenging course, can run as a team and keep the gaps close. We will find out this weekend who truly is the best team in New England!

Individuals

Top Girls By State by Speed Rating

Vermont:

• Charlotte Crum, CVU 128
• Lydia Donahue, CVU 123
• Acadia Enman, MMU 122
• Audrey Neilson, CVU 121

Connecticut:

• Chase Gilbert, Lyme-Old Lyme 143
• Sophia Passalacqua, Greenwich 138
• Lauren Parent, Glastonbury 137
• Sarah Bogdan, Staples 127
• Sofia Holovatska, So Windsor 125
• Annecy Vlieks, Daniel Hand 125

Rhode Island:

1. Cecelia Ludwig, Cumberland 130
2. Mackenzie Licker, St Raphael 121
3. Charli McCue, Cumberland 119
4. Abbie Tighe, No Kingstown 118
5. Abby Nicolopoulos, No Kingstown 118

Maine:

1. Nora Schmidt, Portland
2. Rowan Barry, Greely
3. Georgia Moon, Falmouth
4. Allie Schmitt, Cheverus
5. Laurel Driscoll, Scarborough
6. Karen Higgins, Lincoln Academy

This year the girls race has a number of possible individuals who should be vying for the individual crown. The race should probably be decided between 1 of 6 main contenders with another few having an outside shot at the individual title.  The main contenders come from Connecticut (Chase Gilbert, Sophia Passalacqua and Lauren Parrett), New Hampshire (Alexis Paterna and Maddy Lane), Rhode Island (Cecelia Ludwig), Maine(Nora Schmidt) and Vermont (Charlotte Crum, Lydia Donahue and Acadia Enman).

The contenders can be broken down into two groups: the most likely front runners and the chase pack. The front runner pack is led by Chase Gilbert (Lyme-Old Lyme), who won the CT state championship in an impressive 17:50 at the challenging Whickham Park course. That victory proves that Chase can handle the hills at Thetford and should be considered one of the main favorites on Saturday for the individual crown. Two other runners that put the hammer down last weekend and showed that they need to be taken very seriously are Alexis Paterna (Exeter) and Maddy Lane (Hopkinton), who waged an epic battle at the NH Meet of Champions last weekend. The two ran basically shoulder to shoulder for almost the entire 5k with Paterna closing out the race in 17:05 with Lane right behind in 17:13. They both were very impressive and had amazing seasons and will be looking to cap it off with an individual New England title. 

Rounding out this group of top contenders are Sophie Passalacqua (Greenwich) and Lauren Parrett (Glastonbury) and Cecelia Ludwig (Cumberland). Passalacqua finished 2nd at the CT State Open race last weekend in an impressive 18:04. This clearly shows she has the ability to be in the mix at hilly Thetford and is a runner to watch. Parrett has to be in consideration after her victory at the Woods Trail race earlier this season. She was able to gain invaluable experience by running the course already and winning the meet. She was 3rd at the CT Open and clearly needs to be someone to watch. Cecelia Ludwig is the last runner who is a member of this club. Ludwig won the RI State Championship last weekend in 18:17 and is looking to give the Cumberland team a low stick to help them in the team championship also. This does create an interesting situation for her because she can’t be too aggressive and needs to think about her team probably more than the individual title.

The chase pack includes some quality runners that on any given day may have a shot at this title. Charlotte Crum (CVU) is the defending VT State champion and has an amazing season. Charlotte won the VT race in a time of 19:15 and has plenty of experience running at Thetford. The interesting piece again for Charlotte is that she also has to think about her team and cannot take too many risks in an attempt to win the individual race. The next three in this pack are all from CT and finished within 7 seconds of each other at the CT Open. Sarah Bogdan (Staples), Sofia Holovatska (So Windsor) and Annecy Vlieks (Daniel Hand) all can be in the mix on any given day and should at least be battling for a top 10 or All New England placing. Nora Schmidt (Portland) is the Maine individual champion and ran 18:50 last weekend at Belfast and is another runner to watch in this group. It will be interesting to see how she handles the hills of Thetford after the fairly flat Belfast course last weekend. This group is rounded out by two Vermonters. Lydia Donahue (CVU) and Acadia Enman (Mt Mansfield) finished 2nd and 3rd at the VT State Championship and bring plenty of experience at Thetford into this race with them. That experience alone should allow them to stay in the mix for at least an All New England placing.

The girls race will start the show at Thetford and this should provide a lot of fireworks.. The team race on paper has the makings of a very competitive race that may be hard to determine a winner until the final results are posted.  The weather looks like it is going to cooperate, maybe some morning showers but then clearing, and that should provide for great conditions for some amazing performances. This should be a good way to start the day off on Saturday. Good luck to everyone!