Pittston Area suffered its first two defeats of the year, falling out of first place on the final day of the regular season.
Wyoming Area trails by the slightest of margins after the last scheduled meet, but will have to wait until it sees the results of Holy Redeemer’s make-up meets to find out if it will remain on top of Division 2 of the Wyoming Valley Conference.
Pittston Area entered the final, seven-team cluster meet as one of two WVC unbeatens with a half-meet lead on Crestwood.
Host Crestwood beat four opponents Wednesday, including a convincing 20-41 victory over Pittston Area, to finish 16-0 as Division 1 champion and boasting the best record in the WVC as a whole.
Hazleton Area also defeated Pittston Area, winning 22-37 to finish second at 15-1.
Pittston Area defeated MMI Prep 18-42 and finished 14-2 for third in the division and the WVC overall.
Wyoming Area went 1-2 Wednesday to finish its schedule at 11-5. The Lady Warriors are close behind Holy Redeemer’s 9-4. Holy Redeemer currently has a .692 winning percentage, compared to Wyoming Area’s .688.
In addition to running as part of the WVC Coaches Ed Narkiewicz Championship Meet Wednesday at the Wyoming County Fairgrounds, Holy Redeemer will be compared to Dallas, Lake-Lehman and Tunkhannock and be scored against them as separate duals. The Lady Royals can win the Division 2 title by beating those three teams.
Lake-Lehman (7-5) and Dallas (7-8) could test Holy Redeemer, which should be too much for Tunkhannock (5-10).
Wyoming Area defeated MMI Prep 9-12 Wednesday, but lost to Hazleton Area 16-47 and Crestwood 15-50.
Crestwood had three of the top four runners in Wednesday’s seven-team meet, then had seven runners in a row finish between 11th and 17th place.
Sisters Katie and Mollie Kozich finished 1-2 as the only runners to break 20 minutes.
Pittston Area’s Bella Dessoye was third in 20:03.
Olivea Scalese placed ninth for the Lady Patriots.
Wyoming Area was led by Kierstyn Orlandini in 19th.
Paul Short Invitational
Isabella Dessoye finished 10th out of 362 runners in the Girls Brown Division of the Paul Short Invitational Oct. 3 at Lehigh University when Pittston Area ran in its final invitational of the season.
Olivea Scalese was 95th.
The Patriots were 31st out of 40 teams in the meet, which was won by Pittsburgh North Catholic.
