11/07/2005
Oakers girls' cross country team wins state championship
By: Laurie Los , Daily Times Staff

NORTH SCITUATE - This is exactly why races are run among the best cross country teams in the state. The North Kingstown girls' cross country team has been the talk of the running community in Rhode Island since the turn of the century.
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Entering yesterday's Rhode Island Cross Country Championships, the Lady Skippers had won five straight state titles and were the clear favorite on paper to repeat again.

They won the Class A crown a week earlier and they had the same group of runners back at Ponaganset High.
No one, outside of the Coventry program, thought the Lady Oakers had a shot at dethroning the mighty Lady Skippers.
But, that didn't matter to Coventry.

When the scores were tallied, the Lady Oakers came through with the upset of the century in girls' cross country by surpassing North Kingstown for Coventry's first-ever state crown.
A complete team effort by freshman Kaitlyn Grimshaw (11th), junior Laura Schmitz (16th), sophomore Lindsay Paiva (19th) and juniors Kristen Walker (24th) and Sam Eagleson (25th) lifted the Lady Oakers to the victory with 95 points. The Lady Skippers finished runner-up with 102 points.

"You would think after the Class meet, we came in third at the Class meet," said Coventry first-year coach Michaela Thompson. "The top two teams in our Class meet tied 14 points ahead of us. In the other Class meet, Westerly and La Salle tied 14 points ahead of us, so on paper, we were underdogs. We were big underdogs. I said 'you know what, that might work to our advantage.' First of all, the pressure wasn't on our girls. It wasn't on us at all and that makes a world of difference when you're running a race. We were just going for it."

Coventry had a taste of success last season when the team took third at States to earn a spot at the New England Championships.
Under the direction of Thompson, the Lady Oakers worked hard to follow that up with another strong performance this fall.
Knowing that she had a talented group, Thompson increased mileage and training to get her runners ready to battle against the top in the state.
It clearly paid off. The Lady Oakers have the plaque to prove it.

"She's helped a lot," said Paiva of Thompson, a proven runner herself at Coventry High in the 1990s. "It's just easy to relate to her because she's like us and she really is a role model and something to shoot for."