CHS cross country boys take second in CAC meet

The Chelsea High boys cross county team took second place at last Wednesday’s Commonwealth Conference Cross Country Meet, which was held at Essex Agricultural in Danvers. However, the Red Devils defeated all of their counterparts in the Small Division of the CAC to win the divisional title.

“We wanted to avenge our only loss of the year to Shawsheen Tech (which is in the CAC Large School division), which we knew would be tough, but we also couldn’t forget about Greater Lowell and Mystic Valley, with whom we had extremely close meets in the regular season,” said CHS head coach Don Fay. “We had some nagging injuries so we needed to run a perfect race to win. Unfortunately, Shawsheen was too strong for us.”

Still, the Red Devils turned in a very strong second place performance, defeating Greater Lowell by three points. Chelsea’s Ugo Cvjetan, who lost for the first time this year, was second overall in the race to Whittier’s Brian Stanley. Sophomore Joseph Arroyo finished in seventh overall and collected all-star status with Cvjetan. Francisco Colindres was the third runner for Chelsea and finished 18th overall. Senior Hector Mendoza was next for the Red Devils in 28th place, followed by senior captain Santos Hernandez who rounded out the Chelsea scoresheet with a 32nd place finish. Red Devils Edgar Ocana and Eddie Rosales also ran well, finishing in 33rd and 36th places respectively.

“We did our best but Shawsheen was stronger and deeper than us,” added Fay. “But the boys still won the lower division title, which we won in the regular season by defeating Mystic Valley, Northeast, Essex Aggie and Minuteman.

“We’ve come a long way in the last two years,” noted the coach. “Two years ago I was concerned about the progress of the cross country program. I was having doubts about restarting the program, but in the last two years we have really come far and hopefully we can maintain this progress. We’ll lose three of our top seven boys, but we have a number of JV runners who next year should be stepping up and fighting for those varsity spots.”

This Saturday morning at 11:00, the boys will be competing in the Division 2 State Meet at Franklin Park in Roxbury.

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