MANCHESTER – Cross country coaches frequently say ‘every place counts’ when it comes to a championship race. Those words were never truer than they were at Saturday’s Division I championship.

The Concord girls’ team was in a three-way tie for fourth place with Nashua North and Bishop Guertin at 178 points each), the team championship was decided by a single point, and a few teams were within striking distance of knocking Concord out of the top five, but the Crimson Tide’s depth won out in the tiebreaker, giving Concord sole possession of fourth place and a spot at next weekend’s Meet of Champions.

Pinkerton (92) and Exeter (93) battled it out for the top of the podium, while Bedford (169) was just ahead of the fourth-place fray.

Concord sophomore Quinn Doherty (18th, 21:32), senior Shelly Smith (20th, 21:34), junior Bella Komorek (31st, 22:21), senior Phoebe Dater-Roberts (43rd, 22:59) and junior Clover Doperalski (66th, 24:23) were the five scoring runners for the Tide, but it was the sixth runner, sophomore Gianna Gualtieri (70th, 24:32) the broke the tie Concord’s way.

Cross country scoring is decided by the top five runners on each team, but in a case of a tie, the results of the sixth runner are taken into account. Gualtieri (70th) stayed closer to Doperalski than she typically does, and bested the sixth runners from Nashua North (74th) and Bishop Guertin (107th).

 “If she was any further back, we’d have gone from fourth to sixth place,” Concord girls’ coach Chris Beyer said. “We tend to run pretty tight as a pack, which is what we’ve been trying to work on all year, and I think that was a pretty big part of our success today.”

Sophomore August Doperalski (84th, 25:25) rounded out Concord’s athletes.

“We didn’t go in with the mindset that we were definitely going to qualify for MOC,” Smith said. “We definitely had the hope that we’d have a good shot, but we didn’t think we’d get fourth. That’s a very good position for us and we’re very happy with what we got.”

Smith added, “When I saw Quinn up ahead of me, I knew I had to stay along with her and get up with her. She’s someone who motivates me, and I motivate her as well … especially close to the end.”

Concord’s pack-running mentality and pulling each other along paid huge dividends on Saturday. Nashua North, Bishop Guertin, Alvirne (seventh, 189), Windham (eighth, 191) and Londonderry (ninth, 192) all threatened to knock the Tide out of MOC qualification. Other than one win over Windham, Concord hadn’t beaten any of those teams so far this season.

Freshman Spencer Clemans and junior Josiah Conley were the only representatives from Concord’s boys’ team advancing to MOCs, but the Tide showed significant improvement over last year’s 13th-place finish, coming on 10th on Saturday.

Clemans finished eighth in 16:58 (the top 25 athletes and five teams in each race advanced to MOC) and was one of three freshmen competing for the Crimson Tide.

“He had the race of his life,” Concord boys’ coach Zach Procek said. “I was making some predictions, I had Spencer coming in, maybe 20-25, so the fact that he was able to get eighth, that’s insane. He’s been great to have on the team. He loves the sport and the guys he’s training with.”

Conley (12th, 17:11) was Concord’s second runner, followed by freshmen Ethan Harmon (71st, 19:27) and Maximiliano Jimenez-Calderon (76th, 19:37). 

Juniors Stefan West (96th, 20:15) and Joshua Gurtner (106th, 20:46), and sophomore Colby O’Brien (102nd, 20:30) were the Tide’s other runners.

“Looking at the metrics, our points total was lower, our average time was lower, our average mile was lower, our five-man gap was lower, everything was an improvement, even though our team is younger,” Procek said. “They’re learning. We’re getting better, we’re moving in the right direction again.”

Bishop Guertin (65), Pinkerton (73), Nashua South (84), Salem (98) and Keene (157) were the top five boys’ teams.

Keene junior Sully Sturtz (16:05.1) and Bedford junior Mikita Barry (19:18.9) won the boys’ and girls’ individual crowns.

Division I’s MOC qualifiers will compete against the best from D-II and D-III on Saturday afternoon at Alvirne High School.