Bill Varney considers 30 seconds the magic number.
That’s the spread between the five scoring runners on a team—the kind of gap the North Andover boys’ cross-country coach believes can often lead to success.
“Forty-five seconds is not bad,” he said. “You get over a minute, it gets harder with the best in the class.”
For an early-season competition, the Scarlet Knights gave Varney plenty of reason for optimism about what could be in store for his squad this fall with their performance at Saturday’s Andover XC Invitational.
Despite missing two of their top five runners, North Andover still managed to earn the team title with relative ease, scoring a comfortable 30-64 victory over Amherst-Pelham. Keene (N.H.) was third with 85 points.
Amherst-Pelham’s Calvin Miller breezed to the individual title, covering the five-kilometer course at UMass-Amherst in 16 minutes, 18.7 seconds. East Longmeadow’s Zachary Mazzaferro (second, 16:27.2) and Nick Rivera (fourth, 16:37.5) also cracked the top five.
“My plan was just to sit right around the leaders and try and figure out what the race was going to be like and what the competition was,” Miller said. “Around two miles, I decided to go for the lead and see if I could break away after the last hill. We like to run this course as basically a two-mile race with one last uphill and the rest downhill. That was my strategy coming into this race. I pushed it up the last hill, broke away from the pack and kept gaining.”
The difference-maker for North Andover was its pack mentality. With a separation of just nine seconds, the Scarlet Knights secured the fifth through eighth positions with senior Tucker LaRosa (fifth, 16:43.1), junior Liam Read (sixth, 16:46.6), junior Owen Desmond (seventh, 16:48.4) and junior Cameron Riccio (eighth, 16:52.8).
Nathaniel Zwinggi, North Andover’s fifth scorer, finished 14th in 17:32.5.
Further demonstrating the Scarlet Knights’ depth, they swept the first four spots in the junior varsity race, with junior Luka Radivojevic taking the individual title in 17:29.0. In all, North Andover had nine runners break 18 minutes.
“I am happy. It’s early in the season. We really are just using this as development and trying to get some consistency and really figure out what we have as far as a team,” Varney said. “Right now, I was really happy with what we did. We came off a really heavy week of mileage. We’re healthy, and it’s a matter of seeing if we can develop and really get some big-meet experience.”
North Andover will be aiming to make its sixth straight appearance at the Meet of Champions (MOC).. The Scarlet Knights were fourth at the Division 1B Championships and 16th among 23 schools at the MOC.
“We want to run really strong in the Merrimack League Conference,” Varney said. “We have tough teams always from Lowell and Billerica. I think the three of us will battle it out. I’m not dismissing the other teams, but those teams seem to be at the top of the ladder for boys.”
Concord-Carlisle, a fourth-place finisher at the Meet of Champions last year, showcased its strength in the girls’ race. For the second straight year, the Patriots’ Maria Chopas was the first to cross the finish line. The senior took the pace out hard and never let up, covering the 5K distance in a personal-best 18:15.4. Notre Dame Academy sophomore Kathryn Ford also broke 19 minutes, finishing in 18:37.9.
Concord-Carlisle, which returns its entire varsity squad, put six runners among the top 12 at Saturday’s competition. Senior Pelin Turner finished third in 19:13.3, while junior teammate Liliana Miles was fifth in 19:44.2. Sophomore Felicity Daglish (seventh, 20:07.0) and sophomore Emma Kjaersgaard (11th, 20:13.6) completed the Patriots’ scoring. Senior Alex Skelly was 12th in 20:16.9.
Once the starter’s pistol was fired, Chopas was all business in her wire-to-wire victory.
“I just wanted to go out under six (minute mile pace), and then see how I felt,” she said. “I took the lead from the beginning. It wasn’t the plan, but I knew it could happen. I just wanted to keep the race under six-minute pace.”
Chopas’ time was 45 seconds faster than her winning time at last year’s race, and she is setting her sights on some big goals this season. In 2025, she captured the Division 1B title and finished fourth at the MOC. She followed that with an equally successful track season, highlighted by a 4:52.9 best in the mile and a 10:29.25 mark in the two-mile, which placed her second at the MOC last spring.
“I would say the goal is to win the Meet of Champions this season,” she said. “It’s ambitious, but I’m excited about it.”
As a team, Chopas believes the Patriots are capable of improving on their fourth-place finish at the MOC last fall.
“I think we can do third this year,” she said. “We have all our top people from last year.”
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Concord-Carlise placed four among the top six in the JV race with junior Maeve Sullivan taking top honors with a time of 21:36.1 She was followed by sophomore teammate Clara Cochran in 21:59.7.
Lincoln Pinegar of Keene cruised to a nearly minute win over teammate Colton Hubbard in the boys’ Freshmen Race with a time of 18:08.2. Hubbard was timed in 19:02.8. In the girls’ race, eighth-grader Lucy Balcius of Tyngsborough was all alone at the finish, breaking the tape in 21:25.5. Teammate Lily McCusker was second with a time of 22:47.7.
