AUGUSTA — The Monmouth girls cross country team didn’t think about times during Saturday’s Mountain Valley Conference championship meet. Instead, the Mustangs thought about who they were supposed to be running with, who they needed to beat in order to win the conference title.

The strategy worked beautifully. Monmouth had just one runner in the top 10, but placed four in the top 20 and won the conference title with 73 points.

“We don’t worry about times at this time of year, it’s place,” Monmouth coach Tom Menendez said. “They knew if they needed to be in the top 10, the top 15, the top 20 and they knew what uniform numbers they had to go after because that is who we are contending with.”

St. Dominic finished second with 86 points, earning a tiebreaker with Lisbon based on the finish of their sixth-place runners. Boothbay was fourth and Madison fifth.

Meagan Thomas of Lisbon won the invidual girls title with a time of 21 minutes, 33 seconds.

Matt McClintock of Madison cruised to victory in the boys race, finishing in 16:23. Boothbay’s Chase Brown, the only runner to beat McClintock last season (also at the MVC meet) was second in 16:56.

The Telstar boys won the team title with 45 points, followed by Boothbay (65), Winthrop (69), Lisbon (103) and Hall-Dale 112.

For the Monmouth girls, Tiffany Pease was the lone finisher in the top 10. She was eighth with a time of 23:17. However, the Mustangs had two other runners — India Pickett (12th) and Jordyn Mann (13th)— in the top 15 and another — Becki Bryant (17th) in the top 20.

“We all tried to figure out where we should be in terms of placement and who we should be ahead of,” Pease said.

Also for Monmouth, Emily Szotkowski finished 28th and Christine Kahl was 30th.

“A lot of girls had to step up for this to happen,” Menendez said. “I figured the top four teams would be seperated by 15 points. Our fourth and fifth runners came to run.”

For the Winthrop boys, Kameron Souza finished fourth with a time of 18:07, Marc Hachey was sixth in 18:30 and Dylan Berney was 10th (18:57).

Hall-Dale’s Josh Ringer finished 11th with a time of 19:11 and Monmouth’s Ben Bailey was 19th in 19:49. For the Hall-Dale girls, Emma Wilson finished fifth in 23:00.

Scott Martin — 621-5618
smartin@centralmaine.com