Boothbay Region Elementary School dominated the opening meet of the Busline League cross country season held at the Damariscotta River Association farm, the home course of the host school Great Salt Bay Community School Cougars.

Six teams participated in the meet: Boothbay, Troy Howard, Great Salt Bay, Oceanside, Medomak and Searsport. The damp weather didn't seem to both these teams too much.

Boothbay runners captured the first six places in the girls’ meet and won with a perfect score of 15, followed by Troy Howard, second and GSB, third. The first five girl finishers, all Boothbay runners, were Faith Blethen (15:28), Glory Blethen (16:22), Rachel Gentry (17:12), Haley Abbott (17:37) and Loren Genrich (18:12).

The Boothbay boys also won the boys meet, placing runners in positions two, four, six, seven and eight.

Great Salt Bay placed second in the boys meet, followed by third place Troy Howard. Sam Russ of GSB won the boys meet in an impressive time of 14:22 over the 2.3 mile course, followed closely by Boothbay runner Blake Erhard (14:45), third place finisher Brendan Moline (15:40) of Troy Howard, fourth place finisher Rowan Kristan (16:03) and fifth place finisher Gabriel Teaman (16:07) of Great Salt Bay.

The BRES newcomers to join veterans Faith Blethen, Loren Genrich, Ella Yentsch, Blake Erhard, Tim Chappelle, Bayly Gaughan, Ashley Ames, Will LaBrecque, Will Perkins, Ethan Barter, Rowan Kristan, and Mitchell Partner are: sixth graders Haley Abbott, Glory Blethen, Rachel Gentry, Sarah Gudroe, Marissa Peters, Zada Smith, Kaleb Ames, Mason Erhard, Jonathan Genrich, Chris Hamblett, Jamie LaBrecque, Ben Pearce, Ryan Russell and eighth grader: Duyen Nguyen.

The team will be put to another big test this Thursday, Sept. 18 as they face some strong teams hosted by the Camden/Rockport team.