Courtsey of Bowdoin Athletics

There’s no snow on the ground yet, but the Polar Bears are up and running with the cross-country team bringing home shining results from the Maine State Championships last Saturday. On the men’s team, Will Goddard ’25 came in first, Seamus McDonough ’27 in second and Matthew Servin ’27 following closely behind in third place. On the women’s team, Angelina Hickey ’28 took fourth place and both the men’s and women’s teams finished second overall.

Goddard is no stranger to this placement, as he won the Maine State Championship last year and was named NESCAC Men’s Cross Country Performer of the Week this week for his performance.

“It felt good to successfully defend the title. Though I wasn’t born in Maine, I live in Maine now, so I consider it my home state. So, it’s a little extra special for me to win this championship,” Goddard said.

The Maine State Championships was the first 6K race for the women’s team and 8K for the men’s team of the season and was a more controlled effort than last year’s state meet, which occurred later in the season. According to Tori Bacall ’26, the meet went as expected, with strategies the team prepared in practice executed during the race.

“This race, specifically, we went in with the strategy to go the first two loops in tempo work, slower than race pace, then really step it up in the last loop of the 6K,” Bacall said.

Goddard added that the race had gone according to plan for the men’s team, with himself, McDonough, Servin and pacing each other throughout the race.

“We executed the race strategy pretty well. We stayed together and then pushed at the end and ended up going 1–2–3. We’d talked about wanting to go 1–2–3, the day before,” Goddard said.

Head Coach Ben Raphelson has focused on running in groups both in training and in races. Raphelson incorporated group training to encourage peer encouragement during the stress of a cross-country race. While running in groups can be difficult due to differences in speed, the training offers a new strategy for the team to practice before race day.

“We trained in our workout groups at whatever pace is appropriate for us, and then we combined some of the groups or kept them the same going into the race. It was really nice to be running with the people that we’re used to running and working out with,” Bacall said. “It felt very empowering to run so much of the race with my teammates and being able to communicate how things were feeling and say, ‘Okay, let’s pass this next person together.’”

The team’s next event will be the Bates College Invitational held on October 5 at Pineland Farms where the College will race against NESCAC and out-of-conference opponents.

“I think we’re seeing Bates every single meet we go to. It’s good to have a team that close to us geographically that’s also a pretty competitive team to keep pushing us,” Raphelson said.

Pineland Farms will also be one of the hilliest courses that the team will run this season, which will be a big change from Bowdoin’s “pancake-like” flatness, according to Goddard. Team members expressed their excitement for a race in the woods since they had also done hill workouts to prepare for the Maine State Championships. Regardless of the course landscape, the group-running strategy remains the same.

“I’m gonna be racing to win probably every race. I think that’s a good philosophy to go by—just race to win while making sure that we follow whatever plan we’re supposed to follow,” Goddard said.

Coming up are the NESCAC Championships, hosted by the College at the newly renovated Pickard Fields on November 2nd, which is one of the team’s most highly anticipated meets of the year.

“I don’t need to remind anyone that we’re hosting. I’ll put it that way—everyone’s well aware of it,” Raphelson said.

Raphelson is optimistic about the teams’ mentality going into the upcoming season.

“It’s just a group that’s excited about the direction it’s headed, and they feel like they can compete with just about everyone,” Raphelson said. “It’s all things that are really great to be learning about ourselves in September because the most important weeks will happen in November. We want to be faster by the time we get to [then], but we’ve got time to get faster, too, so we’re in a good spot.”