By Steve Bigham

MILFORD – The Newtown High School girls’ cross-country team wrapped up a 13-2 regular reason Monday afternoon by sweeping its final meet at Eisenhower Park in Milford. The Nighthawks got a second-place overall finish from Melanie Murphy, then took the fifth through 11th spots overall to overwhelm Lauralton Hall (24-37), Bunnell (21-38) and Notre Dame (16-47).

At press time this week, Newtown was preparing for Friday’s South-West Conference championship at Bethel. The locals will be hard-pressed to win it all – Bethel and Joel Barlow are the favorites – but look for this balanced group to finish at least third.

But a league title is not necessarily coach Marsha Caine’s top priority these days. She’s preparing her team for the SWCs and beyond. Next week’s CIAC Class L state run will take place in Manchester and she believes her runners have what it takes to then qualify for the State Open, a feat Newtown has not accomplished in nearly 10 years.

Newtown does not rely on one dominant runner. Instead, it uses a balanced attack of 7 or 8 runners who, while they don’t usually win, finish in a pack right behind the leaders. They manage to accumulate enough points to put their team over the top. You can have the best runner in the league, but it’s not going to win you any meets unless you have the depth to back it up.

“That’s what wins for us, our pack,” noted senior runner Angela Shannon, a prominent member of the pack. “The fact that we have those four or five runners that all run one, two, three, four, five has really helped us this year.”

On Monday, Newtown was without the services of Laura Reid. Colleen Lynch of Lauralton Hall was the overall winner, covering the flat, 2.5-mile course in 17 minutes, 6 seconds. Murphy finished second in 17:23:46. Rachel Benedetto (17:23:91) of Hall finished third and Bernadette Boyle of Notre Dame (17:24) finished fourth, but it was all Newtown after that.

Newtown’s Christine Manfredonia (17:28) finished fifth and was followed in order by Shannon (17:33), Caitlin Weber (17:30), Carolyn Brennan (17:40), Jen Russell (18:09), Sara Macknight (18:11), and Megan Ignatius (18:13).

“We’d really like to go to State Opens this year. We were only off by 30 seconds last year and with the elevation of our runners this year, I definitely perceive State Open for us, which would be awesome. All the good teams go to State Open,” Shannon said.

At press time, coach Caine had not announced which seven runners she would use for this weeks’ SWC meet.