Terryville’s Deforest takes home Class S crown

Terryville’s Chris Deforest was crowned the Class S Boys Cross Country State Champion Saturday as the senior finished the 5K course in 16:43.

“Last year I came in second behind Old Saybrook who is out of this class now,” Deforest said. “It was a great win. I feel amazing, finally winning this race. I upped my mileage over the summer a lot. My training during the season was good, lots of good workouts. I had an overall cool head for this race and that’s how I got it done.”

Despite Deforest’s effort, Bolton edged Terryville by just four points to take home the team title. Bolton had 47 points against Terryville’s 51.

Bolton’s Lucas Carini and Kevin Brudz finished in second and third place and were followed by Terryville’s CJ Hart in fourth.

With the first four finishers hailing from the two schools, it was George Chakulski’s 7th place finish and freshman Silas Gourey’s 19th place finish that arguably propelled Bolton past the defending champions.

“We knew going in that it was going to be extremely close,” Bolton coach Paul Smith said. “We knew it would be within 10 points or less, so every spot was going to count. I told my one and two that we weren’t not getting first place so (Carini) had to finish in second and (Brudz) had to finish third. (Chakulski) was our number three and he had to match Terryville’s strength. The older kids did what they had to do up towards the front, but today my number five, Gourey, ran a 40 second personal record, so basically that was the race.”

FALCONS SOAR TO CLASS L CROWN

Xavier’s lineup looked far different than it did a year ago for the postseason at Wickham Park, but so far the results have been the same. The Falcons cruised to their second straight state title with its top runner approaching history.

Robbie Cozean’s time of 15:30 was the fourth fastest modern time until Sherry bumped it down a spot later in the afternoon. The Notre Damebound Cozean was unchallenged in his event, though, finishing ahead of Newington’s Sam Geisler by 39 seconds.

“Robbie ran well,” said Xavier coach Chris Stonier. “He looked very relaxed. Before the race he said he wanted to go out hard in the first mile. To run five seconds faster than the Wickham Invite; he looks like he has a lot more to go.”

The Falcons had all six of their runners finish in the top 20 as a late charge helped earn them spots. The squad’s secondthroughsixth runners finished 24 seconds apart. Xavier finished about two minutes faster than it did at the Wickham Invite.

Xavier (62) finished ahead of Bristol Central (94); Pomperaug finished sixth and New Milford was seventh.

“I was really happy,” Stonier said. “With a group of three sophomores and one freshman, it’s easy to get overwhelmed at a big meet like this. It seemed the emotions were a little more tempered.”

AVON COMPLETES SWEEP IN MM

Avon’s Jack Martin made it a clean sweep for his school when he cruised to the Class MM title in 16:18. That was a top10 time Saturday overall as he won by 21 seconds over a pair of East Lyme runners — Luke Anthony and Fisher Macklin.

East Lyme took home the team title by 20 points, besting Avon 6787. Guilford, Bethel and Weston rounded out the top 5. Bethel’s

Robert Doyle finished eighth in the race.

TOLLAND WINS 4TH STRAIGHT TITLE

The Tolland boys Cross Country team has now won four consecutive state titles after a dominating showing at Wickham Park Saturday.

Four of the Tolland runners finished with top10 placement in the race, including the individual Class M State champion, Alec Sauter.

“This is a group of guys where a lot of them have been running together for three or four years now,” Tolland coach Brandon Elliott said. “We have a lot of juniors and seniors on the team so they really have built up the ability to train and race together, which they showed today.”

Sauter, a senior, completed the race in 16:08 after finishing in fifth place at the event a season ago.