WESTFIELD – The Frontier girls cross country team continued its impressive postseason performance run on Saturday.

The Redhawks took third place in the Western Mass. Class B race for the second year in a row on Saturday at Stanley Park. Frontier’s Leah Gump took sixth place (20:43) and teammate Sylvie DiBartolomeo finished eighth (21:14), both helping the Redhawks to a third place finish in the Class B race with 76 points.

“I thought they ran spectacular. I think it's the best a girls team of ours has run at western Mass. probably since 1999, 2000,” Frontier coach Walt Flynn said. “A spectacular day. Everybody had their best race today.”

Gump has been one of Frontier’s top runners for the majority of her time with the Redhawks, but Saturday’s race meant a little more to the senior. Knowing it’s the last time that she’ll race in a western Mass. race, Gump was proud to see how far the team has come during her time there. 

“I think that there is a little more pressure stepping up, but there's also just a lot of pride. As I've grown up, I've also watched the team grow, and this year we got third which is better than we've done in decades,” Gump said. “It's just been fun to watch that progression as I've also grown up with the team.” 

Mohawk Trail edged out Monument Mountain by just five points to snag a fifth-place team finish, led by two all-western Mass. performances from freshmen Natalie Lanouse (21:35) and Virginia Krezmien (21:38), who placed 13th and 15th, respectively.

Greenfield placed 18th overall as a team, with Rose Fortin (77th, 26:13) leading the way for the Green Wave. 

Other notable finishes in the Class B girls race included Frontier’s Nicole Plasse (17th, 21:53), Liv Christensen (21st, 22:10.0) and Maia Christensen and Mohawk Trail’s Anya Read (22nd, 22:10.7).

Frontier had more to celebrate in the boys’ race when Evan Hedlund took second place with a time of 16:28. His teammate Luke Howard finished sixth with a time of 16:55, a feat made all the more impressive by the duo’s age – Hedlund is just a freshman while Howard is a sophomore.

“Second and sixth is pretty spectacular,” Flynn said on the pair’s performance. “Luke was coming off of an ankle injury where he missed pretty much the last couple of weeks. They both ran great races and made all-western Mass.”

The pair of top-10 performances gave the Frontier boys a fifth-place finish, the best performance among Recorder schools in the boys’ race. Mohawk Trail placed seventh as a squad with 233 points, led by senior Vincent Gauthier, who medaled with a 13th place finish (17:30), and Greenfield finished 10th with 292 points, led by a seventh-place finish by senior Jackson Caron (16:56).  

Caron wasn’t thrilled with his performance – he’s coming off an illness that left him unsure of how he would be feeling on race day. Though he would have liked more preparation, he was happy with his team’s performance, most notably how they’ve brought their numbers back up. 

“I'm happy with my place and my times, better than it’s been in the past, but I've been pretty sick for the past week, so I haven't really been getting a lot of decent running in,” Caron said. “As a team, I think we did pretty good considering the past two years, we barely had enough kids to put on the line. We came out this year and we're able to put some kids out for JV, too. Overall we've done pretty good compared to the last few years, so it's a win for us.”

Pioneer placed 19th as a team with 483 points and Mahar finished 23rd with 586 points. Other top performers in the boys race included Mohawk Trail’s Peter Healy in 24th (18:04) and Rex Kuoppala (49th, 19;03), Frontier’s Amory Maxey (47th, 18:55) and Pioneer’s Gabriel Malloy (48th, 19:00).