The Bishop Guertin boys cross country team celebrates its Division I championship on Saturday at Manchester's Derryfield Park. (Courtesy photo)

The Bishop Guertin High School boys cross country team can often be full of surprises.

They surprised even their coach, Tom Cassetty, on Saturday – but in a good way.

First, the Cards lined up to start Division I state championship race at Manchester’s Derryfield Park by removing their regular warmup shirts to reveal pink race jerseys as part of October Breast Cancer Awareness.

Then they went on to place four in the top 10 to capture the Division I title with 65 points, eight ahead of second place Pinkerton and 19 ahead of rival and defending champion Nashua South (84).

As for other locals, Alvirne was sixth (188) while Nashua North was 11th (281) and Merrimack 14th (351). This is Guertin’s second title in the last four years, and the area’s third in the last four (South last year).

“We went in with everybody’s mind, maybe even my own – I’m not sure anybody actually thought we could pull off the win,” Cassetty said. “I’m pretty happy we could put it together and pull it through.”

And he knew it was going to happen “When I saw four in the top 10,” he said,chuckling, but as he added, “We needed to go as low as we could with our top four scorers.”

And those scorers worked wonders. Matthew Giardina was second over in 16:34.67, behind winner Keene’s Sullivan Sturtz. The Cards’ Ethan Fischer was right behind his teammate in third in 16:39.50. Then Carson Fischer was sixth (16:52.79) and Samuel Prescott 10th (17:00.85). There’s your four, and finishing the scoring was William Moores (44, 18:34.10).

“We really worked hard physically and mentally over the last couple of weeks,” Cassetty said. “We’ve had our normal workouts, right, just to get the legs faster.

“A lot of our sport is mental, right? It’s overcoming the mental hurdles. We’ve done a lot of talking the last couple of weeks, a lot of strategizing, and trying to find ways we could make it work. The guys really pulled through, they were in a great spot mentally.”

Nashua South had a good day as well. The Panthers were paced by Daniel Byrne coming in fifth in 16:49.50, and Camden Brien 13th (17:11.93) plus Ryan DuVarney 17th (17:27.26). That’s three in the top 20, and five in the top 25 as Andrew Byrne was 24th (17:46.59) and Cameron Patronick 25th (17:48.93). Matthew Motherway was 35th.

Alvirne, meanwhile, was paced by Brent Dunning (21, 17:37.28), then Ashton Rowe (37, 18:24.00) and Jacob Plante (39, 18:26.33). North was led by Nate D’Silva (33, 18:16.88) and Cole Burns (40, 18:27.32). Merrimack’s top finishers were Nathaniel Bergen (57) and Brayden Miller (60).

Obviously, the Cards just had the jump on everyone, and that may have happened before the gun went off. Cassetty felt the pink jerseys played a part in that mental outlook.

“Mentally that was a boost for them,” he said. “They’re busting out these pink singlets, they’re not going to tell anybody, they’re on the line, two minutes before the gun goes off they pull their long sleeve shirts off and all the other teams are going ‘Whoa, whoa'”. It gave them a little mental boost, got them out of their head a little bit. It was great.”

DIVISION II BOYS

Hanover took the title with 39 points, edging Coe-Brown (53) while locally Souhegan was fourth at 115 and Milford fifth (167), with Hollis Brookline eighth.

The top local finisher was Logan Korthals of Milford in eighth (17:26.0) while Souhegan’s Daniel Noorda was 10th (17:31.39). The Sabers got points from Ryan Quinn (20, 18:06.72) and Jacob Spencer (28, 18:32.56). Kasen Fox (39) and Logan St. Dennis (46) rounded out the scoring.

Milford’s top couple after Korthals were Will Whitley (17, 18:02.47) and Chase Paiva (29, 18:33.50). Hollis Brookline was led by John Masiello (31, 18:51.02) and the back-to-back duo of Arjun Inakollu (41) and Jaco Hoesch (42).

In Division III, Campbell was 24th (644).