Freedom senior Brayden Boyle earned the sixth place medal at the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference Cross Country Championships on Oct. 20 at DeSales University.

Boyle found himself between two packs of runners during the boys race, not the ideal situation for the Patriot harrier.

“[At the district meet], I think my plan would probably be just to stick more with either one of those packs because running the whole race alone was kind of tough,” he said. “Either I’ll stay back a little and then take off from there, or I’ll just go up and see what happens if I go up with the front pack. But yeah, it was kind of a difficult situation because I was right in the middle, so I never really had anyone to push me the whole time until that last part and I was pretty tired by then.”

Emmaus’ David Hearn won the race over 124 harriers with a time of 15:49.9.

Parkland’s Colin McGuigan and Cole Orloski placed second and third, respectively, with times of 15:55.7 and 16:23.9.

Emmaus’ Roen Woolf took fourth place in 16:35.7, and Nazareth’s Luke Lotierzo outstepped Boyle with times of 16:43.5 and 16:44.6, respectively.

Said Freedom coach Bob Thear, “I talked to [Brayden] immediately after the race, and we’ve got to decide what we’re going to do [at districts] because he basically ran the whole race by himself. He was 2.8 miles by himself in fifth with nobody nowhere. So, we’ve got to make a decision- either fall back a little bit, run with that pack, then try and make a move, or just try and run with the leaders. It felt like we were watching it and for two miles, I kind of never felt like it was going to happen just because it’s hard to do that by yourself and stay there the whole time.”

Webb Kurtz placed 35th for the Patriots in 18.38.8, and teammate Mikey Messa placed 55th in 19:38.5.

“We didn’t run bad. We didn’t run great. We kind of ran, like, average, how we’ve been working,” said Coach Thear, “hoping for a better performance, a breakthrough from somebody, one or two people at districts.”

Liberty’s Sean Haas was the first to cross the finish line for the Hurricanes, coming in 29th with a time of 18:06.4.

“Sean has kind of been our leader, but sometimes it’s been Emerson Blasi, sometimes it’s been, like today, Alex Rodriguez and Wyatt Hendrickson, but we’ve just been really impressed with them,” said Liberty coach Joe Spang. “Overall, it’s a young team, so we’re really excited about what they could do [at districts] and in the future.”

Rodriguez placed 44th in 19:06.1, Blasi placed 49th in 19:28.5, and Hendrickson came in 52nd in 19:34.7.

Calvin Rittle, Cameron Slocum, Logan Lech, Avery Cassel, and Daeen Nguyen also competed for the Hurricanes.

Other competitors for the Patriots were Andrew Schnable, Will Hitchings, Ben Davis, Nick DeVito, Darrius Towne, Asa Lawser, and Chase Erhart.

Bethlehem Catholic’s Joseph Muhoro was first to finish for the Golden Hawks, coming in 57th with a time of 19:47.1.

David Gomes-Acuna, Matthew Amrick, and Alec Falcone also raced for the Hawks.