Partying Like its 2008
By Mike Miller, BSR Contributor
Saturday was an historic day at Willard Park for so many reasons. Mike Glennon’s Brookline squad completed a once precedented four peat in the D1 boys race, matching the Gloucester dynasty of the 1990’s. With so many more teams in the mix each year, what Glennon and the Warriors have done here is the most remarkable run of success ever seen in the sport. Additionally, we had the first Vocational school to win an All State Title, with Greater Lowell Tech edging Mount Greylock and Norwell by just ten points in the D3 Girls meet. Even more history was made as Boston Latin Academy swept the D2 races, the boys by only 1 point over Longmeadow, and the girls in absolutely dominant fashion. And Parker Charter boys continued its run of excellence by dominating the D3 boys field.
But it’s the final race, the D1 Girls championship, that I would like to talk about, as I think we are seeing something that we haven’t seen since 2007-09, when Lincoln-Sudbury and Newton South put on a show at the All State level, peaking at Franklin Park in 2008 when Steve McChesney’s NS Lions scored 35 points to win a virtual dual meet over Henry Phelan’s L-S Warriors. Each team had 5 girls under or right at 19:00 at Franklin Park, something that hadn’t happened before (or since, with Franklin Park going the way of the Buffalo as a state meet course soon after). I remember feeling bad for Mike McGuire and Haverhill, the 3rd place squad that year. They put together a team average well under 20:00 at Playstead, a feat that nearly always would have been good enough to win. They didn’t, and it wasn’t really close.
Now, I feel that way for five teams.
We hear a lot these days about “trackflation,” be it due to super shoes, nutrition, coaching methods, or just the sport’s popularity bringing in more athletic kids at a young age, perhaps tired of the grind, and cost of, club sports. But “trackflation” doesn’t happen overnight. In 2024, Westford Academy pulled off a major upset in winning this race without future Washington U. commit (and 2025 champion and course record holder) Abby Hennessy toeing the line. They did so with an impressive 19:36 team average, a mark bettered by only Oliver Ames in 2023, and Brookline and Wellesley in 2022. This year, 7 teams were at or under that mark, in a much deeper and more difficult race. Brookline and Wellesley were light years ahead in 2022, OA crushed the field in 2023, and last year Westford found its way to the front of a deep group of 7 teams within 50 points. But despite furious efforts from Newton North, Concord-Carlisle, Westford Academy, Winchester, and Needham, all races that might have won them the meet a year ago, none of them were close.
This is because we have the two best teams of the past 15 years, if not ever, at the front. Consider Billerica, a team that somehow flew under the radar all season, as they were without last year’s D1 runner-up in junior Gianna McGowan for nearly all of it. In spite of that fact, Cullen Hagen’s team waltzed to a D1C title, and put together what I believe would have been the best race on the Devens course for any girls team ever yesterday. Three medalists, all under 19:00 in sophomore sisters Kylie (5th, 18:29) and Caitlyn (14th, 18:51) Donahue, and 8th grader Maya Niles (9th, 18:37), helped lead them to a 19:02 team average, a feat never seen before until yesterday. They also had 6 of the 52 girls who broke 20:00 on the day, one of two teams to do that. McGowan came back to battle valiantly as their 5th runner, hopefully a harbinger of what’s to come. Their ENTIRE scoring team returns in 2026.
But they lost, and it wasn’t really even THAT close, 63-89. That’s because the greatest team in the last 15 years (and I would argue of all time), Lexington, was in the race. Jane Conrad ignored the power play up front between Hennessy and Harvard commit Greta Hammer of Needham, and coasted to a 3rd place finish, close to Hammer’s old course record in 18:06. Unlike Billerica, Lex put FOUR in the top 20 and under 19:00, with Ella Tyson in 10th (18:43) and Erin Ehmann and Alycia Charest each finishing in 18:57. Callie Glenn nearly broke into the top 20 herself, running 19:07. The Lex group is a bit more experienced, with Conrad and Tyson sophomores and the rest of that pack juniors, but there’s a pipeline coming, and both of these teams could produce a top-10 team at this meet with their JV squad. So, no, they’re not going anywhere.
Rebecca Trachsel has been at the helm for the lionshare of the girls XC domination at Lex, and her teams always seem to be in the mix. That being said, so do Hagen’s, as Billerica never seems to be very far from the podium. Consider this stat, since those NS/LS battles in 2009, there have been 15 D1 state championship meets. These are the schools with the most top 10 finishes:
1) Lexington 10
2) Weymouth 9
2) Needham 9
4) Billerica 8
4) Wellesley 8
6) Concord-Carlisle 7
6) Newton North 7
6) Lowell 7
9) Lincoln-Sudbury 6
9) Oliver Ames 6
Hey, look at that team at #2, how’d those guys get in there!?! But seriously, I’d hate to be a team with a good young core coming up in the next two years and have to contend with Lexington and Billerica (oh man!). They’re both young, deep, talented, have an unbelievable feeder system, and are extremely well-coached. Hagen and Trachsel will both soon be MSTCA Hall of Famers because they are steady hands who get their athletes ready to take a November leap each year. Neither team is ranked in the top 5 in the Northeast region, and yet both could make it to Portland. The teams ranked ahead of them came out like gangbusters in the late summer, while Lexington and Billerica played the long game, and are just now moving into their peaks.
So, I hinted towards this question at the beginning of the article, and will do my best to answer it: “are Lexington and Billerica the two best teams of all time?”. The answer is, sort of, no. Well, actually, it’s not yet. It’s so difficult to compare courses, and although I think Franklin Park and Devens are quite similar on time, I’d estimate FP is maybe 10 seconds faster than Willard. Both have difficult hills at similar places in the race, Bear Cage coming at a midpoint that makes it death-defying, and “The Slide” (we have to name that thing) is so steep going up and down it wrecks the rhythm of the race heading into the final mile. I give Franklin the time edge just because of the nature of the trails. FP is mostly hard packed dirt and on a fast day can zoom. Willard is grass, and fairly uneven, so it’s hard to gain momentum, even on flat sections.
So given all of this, I would say Lexington probably is the greatest team ever right now, but to truly unseat the NS-LS juggernaut of 2008, it takes two, and Billerica is just a shade off the 2008 dynamos. If McGowan were healthy all season, they almost surely would have been closer to Lexington yesterday, and likely would have beaten them, but those “if”’s are always present. With virtually all of the key players returning, we should be in for a real treat for at least next year, if not well into the future. Apologies to Brookline, BLA, Parker Charter, and Greater Lowell, but that’s what my eyes were fixated on.
