Morning Sentinel
CROSS COUNTRY: Mt. Blue's Cullenberg wins Laliberte Invitational
BY MATT DIFILIPPO, Staff Writer Kennebec Journal & Morning Sentinel 08/30/2008

AUGUSTA -- Few things in life will ever work out exactly as you plan, but Mt. Blue High School junior Kelton Cullenberg had one of those golden moments Friday afternoon.

At the Laliberte Invitational, a cross country race at Cony High School named in honor of former Cony runner Scot Laliberte, who was killed in a car accident in 2000, Cullenberg executed his strategy perfectly to win the race by more than 10 seconds and break the existing course record by more than 30 seconds.

"I kind of just wanted to stay with the pack until like halfway through the race," Cullenberg said. "I knew there was a big hill right around a mile and a half, so that was perfect. I wanted to pick it up then."

The top female finisher was Maranacook freshman Abby Mace, who completed her second day of high school on Friday. Mace, who finished 55th overall, was the only female in the top 80 and was 1 minute, 3.6 seconds better than Melody Lam, who finished second among the girls.

Mace's time of 20:02.4 bettered the existing course record by more than a minute.

"To be honest, I didn't really have a strategy," Mace said. "I thought that if there were girls ahead of me, I'd just try to stay up with them. But then when it didn't seem like there were any girls ahead of me, I just focused on running a good race and trying to stay up with some of the boys."

The team scores were combined so that each school received one combined score for its boys and girls teams. Brunswick was third on total girls score and tied for second on the boys side, but finished first overall with a combined score of 796. Mt. Blue was second at 801, followed by Falmouth (869), Lewiston (870), Maranacook (931) and Medomak Valley (982).

Led by Mace, Maranacook took first among girls scores, while Lewiston -- with five of the top 17 overall finishers -- easily won the boys side.

The weather cooperated and nearly 500 runners representing 23 schools showed up for the varsity and JV races. Cullenberg's time of 16:33 for the three-mile course placed him ahead of Morse's Jason Kaake (16:43.8), Cony's Luke Fontaine (16:59.8) and Brunswick's Liam Cassidy (17:13.3).

Erskine's Sam Seekins had a strong eighth-place finish. All five of those runners are juniors, and Cullenberg is well aware of the talent in his class. "I have some friends who are juniors at other schools," he said. "That definitely helps me in training, just to think about that."

Cullenberg said he increased his training this past offseason. He's still upping his weekly mileage -- he says he's around 40 miles per week -- and Friday was the first time he got to see how much it paid off.

"I had no idea I was going to do that well," Cullenberg said.

Race organizer Tom Wells, the former cross country coach at Cony, said the Laliberte race is more about camaraderie and running than it is about winning, and in those senses, he felt the races were a big success.

"I get more parents coming up to me of kids who finished in the last half of the race than parents (whose kids finished) in the first half," Wells said. "They really like what they see, especially parents who have never been involved with the sport before."

Matt DiFilippo -- 861-9243

mdifilippo@centralmaine.com

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