BELFAST — The rain, the cold and the hundreds of runners who had preceded them over the 5-kilometer cross country course at Troy Howard Middle School wiped out any thoughts of fast times for the girls of Greely High.

They wanted a state title. And to get it, they would have to get past both regional champions – Yarmouth and Mt. Desert Island – as well as Cape Elizabeth, winner of the state’s biggest all-comers meet – the Festival of Champions – on this very same course a month earlier.

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The battle for position is on at the start of the Class A girls’ race Saturday at the cross country state championships. Scarborough captured the team title.

“It’s all about people,” Greely Coach David Dowling said. “Time is secondary in the state meet.”

Greely proved perfectly capable of handling the challenge. Sophomore Katherine Leggat-Barr and Izzy Evans finished 1-2 and senior Emily Mason broke up Yarmouth’s top four to give the Rangers a five-point victory and the Class B state title, their first since 2001.

Mason wound up 11th. Junior Sophia Stickney was 23rd and freshman Kate Curran, in 31st, beat the fifth runner from the other 13 schools.

“It was really slick today,” said Leggat-Barr, whose winning time of 19 minutes, 17 seconds was 16 seconds faster than Evans, who had another eight seconds on the field. “You had to go to the outside of the turns every single time. I stuttered a lot, but I felt good throughout and I’m really happy with my race.”

Earlier in the day, when the course was still fairly dry, Orono dominated the Class C meet and Scarborough surprised regional champion Massabesic, 92-96, in the Class A meet.

Individually, Orono sophomore Hannah Steelman won Class C in 19:16 and Westbrook senior Halee Phelps, who managed a fifth-place finish a week ago in the Western Maine regional at Twin Brook in Cumberland, won Class A in 19:10, the fastest time of the day and with a two-second margin on Maddy Doyle of Marshwood.

“I had a really good race last week,” Phelps said. “I expected to get top 10 (Saturday), but not first, at all. I just did not expect to win.”

With half a mile remaining, however, Phelps found herself jockeying with Doyle for the lead and threw caution to the brisk wind that kept temperatures in the low 40s.

“Something just hit me,” she said. “I just felt so good.”

Scarborough, runner-up in Western Class A by 11 points a week ago, rode a wave of momentum built up by its school’s victory in the Class A boys’ race minutes earlier, as well as news that the Red Storm field hockey team had won a state title earlier in the day.

“That was really encouraging, knowing they did it so we really could,” said freshman Samantha Saraceno, who placed 18th as Scarborough’s fourth runner to beat every other school’s No. 3 finisher.

“We just really felt it today,” said sophomore Marisa Carbone, who placed 17th overall and third on her team behind freshman Bethany Sholl (11th) and junior Laura Volan (14th).

“We knew we could do it, but we were still surprised.”

Junior Morgan McKeown (46th) finished off the scoring for Scarborough, which earned its first state title since 2008.

Orono, the two-time Class C state champion, wound up on top of every school when all three meets were scored as one. Sophomore runner-up Kassidy Dill, junior Olivia Fandel, freshman Liza Gallandt and senior Lily Koffman all finished among the top 11.

Waynflete, led by the 5-6 finish of sophomore Ellie Chidsey and senior Phoebe Colvin-Oehmig, finished second in Class C.

The top six teams – Yarmouth, Massabesic, Cape Elizabeth and the three state champions – advanced to the New England championships next Saturday in Manchester, Connecticut, along with the top 25 individuals, regardless of class. Every girl who finished faster than 20:08 qualified.

MDI, the three-time defending Class B state champion, wound up fourth behind three Western Maine Conference schools: Greely, Yarmouth and Cape Elizabeth.

“We trained hard through regionals, then rested them this week with lower mileage and higher intensity,” said Dowling of Greely, which finished six points behind Yarmouth a week ago. “They were a little stale last week, and so we took the staleness out of their legs.”

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