NORTHFIELD — Sometimes it's not such a bad idea to lower your expectations.
That may have been the case at the Division 1 All-State meet yesterday with North Andover senior Darryl Varney, who ran his best race of the year to finish 11th overall in 16:43.7 on the demanding Northfield Mountain 5K course.
That performance was following a 13th-place finish in last week's Division 2 Eastern Mass. meet.
"My expectations weren't that high," said Varney. "I had a bad race (at All-State) last year — I finished 31st — and I didn't race very well last week. I was thinking I wanted to be in the top 25, or maybe the top 20.
"I was running good in September, then I ran a bad race at the league meet (finishing second) and I got the flu right after that, so I wasn't feeling that strong.
"I went out conservative but when I got to the top of the first hill, I felt good so I picked it up."
Varney finished his last cross country race in high school impressively, passing several runners in the last mile. Moreover, his time was two seconds faster than Ipswich's Greg Krathwohl, who surged past him to win the Cape Ann League meet.
Northfield is hilly, the type of course he prefers. Plus, he and the rest of the team trained on the course last Tuesday.
Also for North Andover, classmate Max O'Brien came in 34th in 17:18.1 as the area's fourth highest finisher, trailing just Methuen's Jared Reddy (third), Varney and Methuen's Andrew Stamatopulos (22nd).
The top two area boys underclassmen were Whittier Tech's Bryan Stanley, who was 12th in the Division 2 All-State meet with a 17:04.3, and Andover's Simon Voorhees, who was 41st in Division 1 at 17:21.9. Both are juniors.
On the girls' side, the top area underclassmen were Haverhill's Julie Solimine (fourth) and Jillian Meserve (44th) and Central Catholic's Kelsey Kowal (55th).
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