Flyers Defeat Natick Dramatically By 1 Point

By Varun Tekur

Framingham High Sports Writing Club

The Framingham Boys Cross-Country team ran in their final regular season meet on Tuesday, Oct. 20, with a little extra motivation because they were facing their rival, Natick.

The team wanted to make this a memorable meet for the seniors who would be running in the last regular season meet of their high school cross country careers.

Before the race, the whole team huddled around in a circle as the seniors gave a pep talk.

As usual, senior captain Mikey McDonald flew past all runners and won the race with a time of 15:22 on the 2.87 mile course.

Natick then took the lead in the race as two of their runners finished in 2nd and 3rd place.

However, junior Alex Lowry from Framingham was close behind them and came in 4th place with a time of 16:06.

The next finishers for the Flyers were senior Paul Halberstadt (6th place) and Junior Tyler Hall (7th place), with times of 16:34 and 16:38, respectively.

The meet was tied at this point in the race, meaning that the time of each team’s 5th finisher would determine the outcome of the race.

In high school cross country, a team’s score is determined by the sum of the places of its top 5 finishers, which means that the winning team has the lowest score.

As the clock approached 17 minutes, freshman Ben Burgess from Framingham came sprinting towards the finish line with a time of 16:57 to defeat the next Natick runner.

This allowed the Flyers to dramatically win the race by one point, 27-28.

Along with McDonald and Halberstadt, Framingham’s other seniors are captain Jared Nussbaum, captain Eddie Lynch, Michael Goldberg, Nick Benoit, Jake Hansen, and John Lagoutaris.

The win against Natick helped the Flyers finish the regular season with a 6-5 record.

However, the season isn’t over, as the team has its eyes set on the upcoming Bay State Conference meet.