By Steve Bigham

The Newtown High School girls’ cross country team has jumped out to a 6-0 start in league action this season and is now preparing for what should be an exciting meet at home next Tuesday afternoon.

That’s when the Nighthawks will get their toughest test yet, running alongside the powerhouse teams of Bethel, New Milford and Joel Barlow, who finished No. 1, 2 and 3 at last year’s South West Conference meet.

Newtown finished fourth a year ago. New Milford is not as strong this year.

“That will be a preview of what the SWCs are going to look like,” predicted coach Marsha Caine.

On Tuesday, coach Caine’s runners made a clean sweep of their dual meet at home, springing past Pomperaug (17-45), Foran (15-50), and Brookfield (20-43).

Newtown, which may have the strongest pack of runners in the league, was led by Laura Reid, who covered the 2.5-mile Newtown course in 17 minutes, 16 seconds. A week ago, Reid finished seventh overall (5th for Newtown) in wins over Masuk, Immaculate and New Fairfield.

 Right now, according to coach Caine, Reid is running faster than Erin Kostecki, an All-SWC runner for Newtown a year ago who has since graduated. No one predicted these kinds of numbers from Reid and she continued to turn heads Tuesday, finishing just a second behind Brookfield’s all-everything runner, Lisa Olsen, who was first overall.

Angela Shannon (3rd overall, 17:39), Melanie Murphy (4th, 17:44), Jen Russell (6th, 17:51) and Christine Manfredonia (7th, 17:58) rounded out Newtown’s top five. Other Newtown runners finishing in the top 20 overall were Carolyn Brennan (8th, 18:07), Caitlin Weber (10th, 18:12), Megan Ignatius (13th, 18:58), Jayme Crane (16th, 19:37), and Monica Zigman (20th, 20:41).

No doubt, this is the most balanced bunch of runners coach Caine has seen during her short tenure at Newtown.

“My 14th runner this year would have been a varsity runner (top five) two years ago,” she said. “We’re lowering our pace per mile every week. That’s what their whole focus has been.”

The Nighthawks finished fifth out of 24 teams at Saturday’s Bethel Invitational. E.O. Smith of Storrs finished first overall, while Joel Barlow and Bethel both finished in the top five.

“It was the first time we’ve placed since I’ve been coaching. We won apple pie,” coach Caine said.

Shannon was Newtown’s top runner, finishing 25th overall. Russell, Reid, Manfredonia, Sarah Macknight, and Caitlin Weber followed closely behind. Newtown’s top six runners all finished within one minute of each other.

Boys Are 5-1

Head coach Rich Pesce has been blessed with a crop of new runners who have helped bolster a lineup that has suffered severe losses over the last couple of seasons. But even they were not enough to help the Nighthawks get by Pomperaug, which beat Newtown (22-37) on Tuesday afternoon.

Newtown did knock off Foran (23-38) and Brookfield (22-34) to raise its record to 5-1. Senior David Rod finished first overall in a time of 16 minutes, 32 seconds. He came in behind speedster Ken Simeon of Foran (16:32) and Pomperaug’s Rob Rosasco.

Dan Maxwell finished fifth overall in 17:08, but Pomperaug proved too tough. In a head-to-head matchup with Newtown, the powerful Panthers finished first, third, fifth, sixth and seventh.

Newtown was without the services of its number three runner, Dan Phillips, who was out with an ankle strain. Phillips, a first-year runner, is expected to be healthy in time for Tuesday’s home meet against Bethel and Joel Barlow.

Coach Pesce remains confident that his Nighthawks can return to respectability this season and believes a top three finish at the SWCs is not out of the question.

“How we do against New Milford will tell us else about just how good are we,” Pesce said. “We have a nice pack of kids. Against some of the lesser teams, our pack is a pretty strong pack, but when you run against a team like Pomperaug or New Milford, where they have depth, that’s where we suffer. Yesterday we faced a really good team and the depth showed.”

Newtown’s Chris DiNoto finished 10th overall in 17:49, then, after a big gap, Chris Giacolone crossed the line in 16th place in 18:28. Tyler Hull was 19th in 18:37 and David Millar rounded out the top 20 in 18:39.

Newtown just missed out on apple pie at this past Saturday’s Bethel Invitational, finishing sixth out of 22 teams.