Westfield's Ben Doiron competes in yesterday's cross country race against Amherst. (Photo by Frederick Gore)
COURTESY OF RICK DOIRAN
WESTFIELD – The Bombers were caught up in the Hurricane that is Amherst High School on Tuesday, losing 33-24. With the loss, Westfield fell to 4-3 on the year. The loss did not put a damper on the attitude of the Bombers’ faithful however, as the boys and girls from the Whip City both had a blast celebrating Senior Night.
Ben Doiron continued his winning ways, finishing first overall in 15:55. Doiron finished the year undefeated as an individual, a feat that hasn’t been matched in recent memory. Even sensational Bomber alum Blake Croteau, who is currently one of the top runners on Division 1 UMASS Amherst, was unable to win every regular season race last year. Doiron edged Amherst’s Ryan Stender for the victory.
Cheyenne Grabiec finished his regular season with a bang, finishing the 5K with a big personal record of 16:25. Senior Colin Irujo finished in 17:05, while freshman Gabe Piepergerdes ran 17:31.
The two biggest stories of the day however were Will Steger and Matt Roy. Steger’s shoe came off at the mile point, and he continued to run, ditching his other shoe. He then turned in a blistering next mile, estimated to be somewhere in the 5:30 range, in only socks, passing nearly a half dozen other runners in the process. He finished the race with a 20 second PR, breaking the tape at 18:07. After fighting through the pain of landing on jagged rocks and stumps for more than two miles, the only thing Steger could say was, “Let’s Go!”
Matt Roy, who started the year barely in the top 10 amongst runners on Westfield, placed sixth, breaking his previous best run by almost a minute. Roy improved on last week’s 19:16 with a showing of 18:21. Roy edged teammate Liam Flaherty, breaking away from the senior between the 1.5- and 2-mile mark. The two went through the 2-mile mark at around 11:40. Roy maintained his lead on Flaherty, running alone for the last mile. Flaherty ended up running 18:34.
Many seniors had large PRs in the last regular season race of their career. Brian Mitchell had a season best time of 18:54, while Dakota “Bare-Foot Jimmy” Bigelow ran more than 45 seconds faster than his previous PR with a 19:08. Also of importance was somebody who has been an inspiration to the Bombers all year. Zach Albano set yet another PR, going under 26 minutes. Albano has PR’ed in every race except one, and has dropped more than five minutes of time off his first race. The newcomer has earned the respect of his teammates by giving his best effort in every practice, and the results are showing.
After the race, all the seniors received gifts from their teammates, and retrieved personalized posters that underclassmen taped to trees along the course before the meet. The seniors leave WHS with a lifetime record of 22-5, and are optimistic about the postseason. Captain Liam Flaherty was happy with the team’s season, mentioning, “We had a great year. We put in a lot of hard work and proved a lot of people’s preseason predictions wrong. I think we’ll do well in Western Mass and see where it goes from there.” Flaherty echoed the whole team’s sentiments when he said, “If nothing else, I’ll definitely miss these guys.”
If the Bombers can place in the top three teams in Western Mass as a team, they will qualify for the state meet. The biggest competition for the Bombers will be Amherst, Minnechaug, Longmeadow and Northampton. The Bomber Boys lost to Amherst and Minnechaug by more than 7 points each, but came within one point of Northampton and beat Longmeadow by one point earlier in the year.
