One of the more popular meets on the calendar, the Twilight Invitational at the Cape Cod Fairgrounds in Falmouth, was complicated by the storm predicted to hit the Cape Cod area particularly hard on Sunday evening. As such the Sunday session that included small and medium sized schools like Wayland was moved to Saturday and combined with the already scheduled large school meet. This created an all-day lollapalooza of cross country, with races starting in the afternoon and lasting late into the night.
Wayland athletes showed very well in this large meet, which as usual featured large numbers of people racing and a somewhat hectic start. The 9th graders raced first, and despite some travel-related snafus that cut into her ability to warmup thoroughly, Brynn Andrus showed no ill effects in her medal-winning 21st place performance. The next WHS athletes to race were the boys 9th graders, with Alex Doxopoulos leading his teammates Griffin Jorgensen and Drake LeBaron over the two loop, 2.1 mile course.
The rest of the Wayland runners competed on the three loop 5 kilometer layout, with its many twists and turns and a trip through a barn among other features. The 10th grade boys, who won the 9th grade race at this meet a year ago, looked to repeat the team victory in the 10th grade race. Out of 12 scoring teams they easily beat all comers with a low point total of 68. Leading the way was Ryan Foley in second followed closely by Brandon Hopps in third with both of them earning medals. Another pair of athletes came in close together in Ryan Young and Archie Baker. Elliot Hopper rounded out the scoring five being followed closely by Grady Spence.
Co-captain Cordia Wang returned to the scene of one of her best races from last year and repeated her performance from that day in the girls junior varsity 5k. This left the final race to feature Wayland athletes, the boys JV. A few runners had been moved out of the much later scheduled varsity race into this race instead so that the team could return to Wayland before midnight. In the end, one of those runners, senior co-captain Matthew Tan was able to get the last medal available by finishing 25th and holding off a pack of challengers in the final stages of the race. He was followed closely by junior Reese Migdal. Senior Morgan Fallace improved on his time at this meet from a year ago, and co-captains Leo Ciccarelli and Edge Wheeler rounded out the Wayland contingent which placed 13th of 29 scoring teams. This was Ciccarelli's first race after recovering from illness at the start of the school year, and a tough ask being thrown right in with 300+ other runners.
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