Holy Redeemer, Dallas and Montrose handed Lake-Lehman, Berwick and Scranton Prep respectively their first league losses in boys cross country meets Wednesday.
Tommy Brady, Grant Smith and Aiden McDonald finished in succession in second through fourth place to overcome an individual win by Nick Hockenbury and lead the way as Holy Redeemer beat Lake-Lehman in the Wyoming Valley Conference, 27-29, Wednesday at Kirby Park.
Hockenbury finished first in the six-team cluster meet and got plenty of support with 2 teammates in the top 6 and 6 total Black Knights in the top 11, but the Royals had just enough to beat them head-to-head.
After Hockenbury’s 27-second win in 16:57, Michael Serafin and Casey Weaver finished fifth and sixth.
Jonny Renfer’s seventh-place finish clinched the win for the Royals regardless of what happened behind him.
Tunkhannock’s Brendan Yatsko was eighth.
Brady Newman, Will McCarroll and Ahmad Dabhseh took the next three spots for Lake-Lehman before Spencer Smith came in 12th for Holy Redeemer.
Nick Rousseau, Wyoming Valley West’s top finisher, was 13th.
Holy Redeemer also handled Tunkhannock (16-43) and Wyoming Valley West (15-48) in the cluster meet to improve to 9-1 on the season.
Lake-Lehman defeated Hanover Area and Nanticoke by the maximum, 15-50 score. Tunkhannock and Wyoming Valley West beat the same two teams to go 2-1 on the day.
Dallas handed Berwick its first loss, 26-29, at the Luzerne County Rec Field course in Forty Fort.
Bryce Phillips finished first as the Mountaineers went 3-0 on the day, also beating Northwest and Columbia-Montour Vo-Tech.
Phillips finished in 16:36 to edge Northwest’s Owen Heintzelman by a second.
Wyoming Seminary’s Jack Novelli was third, Berwick’s Mattocks Shultz was fourth and Dallas’ Aiden Cotton was fifth.
Northwest’s Derek Pierentoni was sixth.
The next nine spots were filled by runners from either Dallas or Berwick.
Ben Carro and Michael Evans from Berwick were seventh and eighth.
Ben Bradley and Ryan Borton were ninth and 10th for Dallas.
Berwick and Northwest each went 2-1, Wyoming Area and Wyoming Seminary were 1-2 and Columbia-Montour Vo-Tech went 0-3.
Crestwood and Hazleton Area each went 2-0, beating Pittston Area and Wilkes-Barre Area in a five-team meet hosted by MMI Prep.
Pittston Area was 1-2 with a win over MMI Prep.
Woobie Kupsky from MMI finished first, followed by Crestwood’s Weston Medvetz and Pittston Area’s Preston Klem.
Nate Sinkovich and James Bixby finished first and third as Montrose dominated on its home course, beating five Lackawanna League opponents, including handing Scranton Prep its first loss, 18-38.
The Meteors other four wins came by an average of 27.5 points (the maximum is 35).
Sinkovich won by 25.6 seconds over Elk Lake’s Justice Johnson in 17:03.7.
Montrose’s James Bixby, Blue Ridge’s Duncan Geyer and Montrose’s Logan Birchard were the others to break 18 minutes in third through fifth places.
Scranton Prep was led by Ryan Flaim and Graham Oven in sixth and eighth place. Montrose’s Nick Harder finished in between.
Heath Bowker and Max Ksenich from Blue Ridge rounded out the top 10.
Scranton Prep finished the day 4-1 with the help of a 26-31 victory over Blue Ridge, which went 3-2.
Elk Lake won a tiebreaker over Holy Cross to finish 2-3.
The Crusaders joined the other teams in picking up 15-50 wins over Carbondale, which did not enter any varsity boys runners.
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Complete scores from all of the dual meet combinations decided in Wednesday’s clusters: https://nepasportsnation.com/wednesdays-district-2-scoreboard-4/.
