When the smoke cleared — and there was plenty of it — Wyoming Area eventually emerged from the aftermath of Wednesday’s competition as the champion of Wyoming Valley Conference Division 2 girls cross country.
“That’s a remarkable accomplishment for the girls,” Wyoming Area coach Mike Branley said. “I’m happy for them.”
Wyoming Area had already completed its WVC schedule prior to Wednesday’s Ed Narkiewicz WVC Coaches Conference Meet at the Wyoming County Fairgrounds.
The Lady Warriors finished 11-5.
Several other teams still were making up postponed regular-season duals by using the results from the conference meet and two of those teams – Holy Redemer and Lake-Lehman – had the ability to beat or tie Wyoming Area’s record.
Add in the fact that, with conference meet scoring to be worked out, not all the make-up meet scores were officially determined Wednesday night. Further complicating the issue is that two- or three-way ties were possible and each has a different tiebreaking procedure, some of which is not exactly at the fingertips of all the parties involved.
The eventual result was that Holy Redeemer lost twice, including by a single point to Dallas, keeping it from joining the tie. Wyoming Area and Lake-Lehman were tied and the Lady Warriors had that tiebreaker from winning their head-to-head meet earlier in the season.
“We talked about it briefly and I said, ‘I think we won the division’, but I didn’t know what Lehman’s record was,” Brantley said.
Wyoming Area finished fifth of 10 teams in the scoring of the overall conference meet.
Crestwood won easily beating second-place Hazleton Area 26-73.
Wyoming Area scored 137 points, beating among others, seventh-place Pittston Area, which was 15-1 during the season.
“I feel what represents the season for us with the girls was the coaches meet where we had four runners come in within several places of one another,” Branley said. “It wasn’t a tight pack, but it was a really nice cluster, which is how we finished in the top half of the field that included some really big schools.”
Crestwood had the top three finishers in Katie Kozich, Mollie Kozich and Adrienne Shebelock.
Isabella Costa from Wyoming Area finished 13th of 102 runners.
Pittston Area’s Olivea Scalese was 21st.
Addison Gaylord returned from injury to lead Wyoming Area’s cluster of runners. She was 38th while Brenna Yankovich was 40th, Kierstyn Orlandini 46th and Sofia Menta 48th.
Pittston Area’s Alexis Noone finished third in the junior high girls race.
The final WVC Division 1 standings were: Crestwood 16-0, Pittston Area 15-1, Hazleton Area 14-2, Wilkes-Barre Area 10-6, Dallas 8-8 and Wyoming Valley West 2-13-1.
The final WVC Division 2 standings were: Wyoming Area 11-5, Lake-Lehman 11-5, Holy Redeemer 10-6, Tunkhannock 5-11, Nanticoke 2-13-1, Berwick 0-13-2.
