By Steve Bigham

The girls cross country team at Newtown High School this week got a pretty good idea of where it stood in the South West Conference this fall – third.

The Nighthawks, who opened the season 6-0, finished behind powerhouses Bethel (24-33) and Joel Barlow (21-34) in a dual meet on Tuesday afternoon at home. The ‘Hawks did, however, beat New Milford (20-43) and maintained a 7-2 record heading into next Tuesday’s dual meet at Stratford. Jonathan Law and Weston are also scheduled to run that day.

The mediocre showing makes a championship for Newtown appear highly unlikely. Nevertheless, the Nighthawks are a better team than they showed this week and Marsha Cain will do her best to get Newtown back on track.

“Half the team did its job. The rest did not seem to have their heads in the right place,” said head coach Marsha Caine. “There wasn’t as much confidence as usual. I plan to find out what happened.”

The coach said she still believes her team can finish among the league’s top three, but remains uncertain about how to get her squad to compete with Bethel and Barlow. Both schools this week had two runners cross the finish line before the first Newtown runner crossed. That runner was Laura Reid who continues to run well. The sophomore finished sixth overall in 17 minutes, 21 seconds.

New Milford’s Ashley Ryan won top honors in 16:23. Bethel’s Victoria Brautigam (16:37), Barlow’s Ashley St Pierre (16:38) and Courtney Dugan (17:00) and Bethel’s Eva Ohlund followed her.

Newtown sophomore Caitlyn Weber made her finest showing of the year with a 10th place overall finish in 17:29. Senior Angela Shannon was 12th in 17:38, followed by Carolyn Brennan (14th, 17:52), Jen Russell (15th, 17:58), Christine Manfredonia (16th, 18:02), Sarah MacKnight (17th, 18:23), Megan Ignatius (18th, 18:25), and Melanie Murphy (19th, 18:26).