BELFAST – A 14-year-old boy from Belfast Area High School apparently collapsed and died while running through the woods in a weekend cross country meet, authorities said Sunday.

Joseph Diprete-DiGioia of Belfast was competing Saturday in the second annual Maine XC Festival of Champions when he collapsed on or near the running path behind the Troy Howard Middle School.

Police Chief Allen Weaver said the last recorded sighting of Diprete-DiGioia was when he passed the first checkpoint.

When the freshman runner failed to emerge from the woods at the finish line, his parents notified organizers and an extensive search was mounted. He was found sometime later beside the running trail at approximately 3 p.m.

Butch Arthers, principal of the high school, was at the meet.

“This is my 14th year [as a school faculty member] and this is the first time we’ve had a student-athlete death at school occur during a season,” Arthers said.

“He was a bright student and well-liked by everybody he hung out with,” Arthers said.

The death was not considered suspicious, and an autopsy will be performed to determine its cause.

The school department reacted to the death by organizing its crisis team and scheduling counseling sessions.

Grief counselors were made available Sunday afternoon at the high school. Support staff will also be available for Belfast Area High School and Troy Howard Middle School students during the week, said Bob Young, SAD 34 superintendent.

“We’re certainly very sad about what happened and very sympathetic to what the family is going through at this time,” Young said Sunday. “We will have the staff in place to try and keep things as normal as possible, which is difficult in a case like this. Anything like this has a sobering and moving effect on a school because it happens unpredictably. We are working with our crisis team and it was a very somber group that met here this morning.”

Diprete-DiGioia was competing in the second race of the day when he collapsed. There were about 160 runners in his group.

Two more races were held after the race Diprete-DiGioia was in.

Weaver said more than 550 runners from across the state took part in the all-day event.

Arthers said he was unsure what the death would mean for the school’s cross country team. “I don’t know their plans. They’re going to get together after school [Monday] and talk about what’s going to happen.”

Ryan McLaughlin, a Bangor Daily News sports clerk who was doing a story on the meet, was present when word of the death spread Saturday.

“During the course of the awards ceremony, the Belfast athletes were going in and out of the gym as I was doing an interview, so I thought something was up,” McLaughlin said.

McLaughlin attended the meet with the Brewer High School cross country team and learned of Diprete-DiGioia’s death from Brewer coach Glendon Rand, who announced it to the team on the bus.

“It’s just a tragic ending to what had been a great day. We were all shocked and everyone got real quiet,” McLaughlin said.

The Belfast course is 3.1 miles and is also the site of the high school cross country championships for eastern Maine.

NEWS sportswriter Andrew Neff contributed to this story.