Dover-Sherborn junior Bowles over cross-country course record; team still unbeaten
DOVER – There are no secrets when high schoolers are involved. But this was no rumor.
Margaret Bowles was going for it.
A team tweet from the day before put the goal out there for all to see. And when the Dover-Sherborn junior emerged from the woods – well in front of the pack - into a sun-drenched clearing early in Thursday's cross-country race, she heard it from a supporter.
“School record! School record!”
When Bowles later appeared from a forest at the bottom of a hill, the mark was clearly in sight. With her nearest competitor more than a minute in arrears (Norton's Shea Podbelski placed second in 18:51), she sprinted hard to the finish line, before slowing to a stop and bending over from exhaustion.
“Did she get it?” someone asked.
She got it.
Her time of 16 minutes, 33 seconds on the 2.6-mile course bested 2015 D-S grad Michelle Alessandro’s mark set in ‘13 by nine seconds. To further specialize the day, the Raiders defeated rival Norton by three points to claim at least a share of the Tri-Valley League Small championship.
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“One always comes with the other,” Bowles said. “It’s great when the stars align like that.”
With both individual and team goals met on the final home meet for seniors, Bowles was pleased with how the spectacular fall day turned out.
“It’s climactic, it’s fun,” she said. “It’s a really good meet to do it and it’s against Norton, which is always a really big meet for us. They’re always super good. It was close as always and we came out on top as a team.”
Norton, which like D-S entered the meet undefeated, placed the next three girls to make it a tight team race, but freshman Camille Boudreau (18:56) led a pack of five D-S runners through the finish to put the Raiders at 4-0 on the season.
Molly Malloy, Ava Kasparian, Laura Green and Maddie Cronin took places 5-9 to secure the 27-30 victory.
“They worked really hard; they were patient,” said D-S coach Toni Milbourn. “Norton is such a tough competitor – every year we come head-to-head like this and I’m just very proud of the way they executed their race today. They raced all the way to the finish. If you scored this meet at the mile, the 2-mile, it was all different throughout the entire race. I can’t ask for much more than that.”
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Bowles came within eight seconds of breaking the record at a previous meet this season and she didn’t think she had it broken until the final strides.
“It was close enough that I knew I had to push the whole way,” she said.
“She’s been working for it,” Milbourn said. “She’s such a reflective type of runner and a hard worker. She just wants to nail it every single time. The last time we raced here, she was looking for little ways to tweak her approach to this course. We talked about it, we came up with a plan and she executed it. I’m so happy for her.”
Norton boys top Dover-Sherborn
The day’s first race also pitted a pair of 3-0 teams. But the Lancer boys prevailed 17-44 as Andrew McConnell (15:25), Brandon Scovil (15:30) and Michael Katsikis (15:32) finished 1-2-3 for Norton. Aidan Pearsall (15:32) was the top finisher for D-S, placing fourth.
Grant Sullivan (16:09, 7th) and Owen Fontaine (17:08, 10th) also finished in the top 10 for the Raiders.
Tim Dumas is a multimedia journalist for the Daily News. He can be reached at tdumas@wickedlocal.com. Follow him on Twitter @TimDumas.
This article originally appeared on MetroWest Daily News: Dover-Sherborn's Margaret Bowles sets home cross-country course record
