Photo: Coming home. 

There were two powerhouses running the Clay Pit Pond cross country course Tuesday, Oct. 6: the cross country teams from Lexington High School and Belmont senior Leah Bram.

It was going to be a mighty high mountain to climb for Belmont High’s harriers to scale past the Minutemen, which has become a juggernaut program. While the boys’ fell by a convincing 15-46, the girls’ ate into Lexington’s score line, dropping a 21-34 decision against the Minutemen’s top varsity lineup (last season Lexington ran a largely second-string team against the Marauders).

Leading Belmont’s Girls’ was its steady star Brams, who has always finished first racing the Clay Pit Pond course and has only lost once in a Middlesex League duel meet in her four varsity seasons (last season to Woburn’s Gina D’Addario who is currently running at defending Division 3 national champions John Hopkins). Brams held a 20 second lead with a little over a mile remaining and finished in 19 minutes and 7.6 seconds, a season’s best and just outside her course record of 18:58.

Second for the Marauders and sixth overall was junior (a recent transplant from Washington state) Sara Naumann who split Lexington’s middle runners with a strong 20:23, followed by senior leader Sophia Klimasmith who set her season’s best of 20:50 in eighth place. Rounding out the varsity race, senior Meredith Hughes (9th, 231.01), final varsity scorer freshman Audrey Christo (10th, 21.03), frosh Eleanor Amer (12th, 22:02) and seniors Brett Koslowsky (13th, 22:04), Emma Chambers (14th, 22:16), Madison Kelts (16th, 22:45) and Carly Tymm (18th, 22:50).

On the boys side of the ledger, freshman Zach Tseng led the Marauders in 6th in 17:18. The rest of the varsity scorers were sophmore Calvin Perkins (8th, 17:37), senior Mike Ferrante (9th, 17:46), junior Manion Wilder (11th, 18:10) and senior Ian Bowe (12th, 18:17).