One of the state’s bigger high school cross country races already has been held, and the season hasn’t even started yet.

That’s because it wasn’t a meet with direct state championship ramifications. It was an exercise in measuring preseason conditioning, and a bonding activity for fall sports teams and athletes at Bangor High School.

Nearly every team, varsity and sub-varsity alike, participated in a 2.5-mile run on the Bangor High cross country course last Thursday – about 300 runners altogether, according to Bangor assistant boys soccer coach Don Erb, who has organized the event for the past five years with cross country head coach Pattie Craig.

“It’s a good chance for the athletes from the different teams to see each other,” said Erb. “They don’t really see each other much during the preseason, and they don’t get to see each other all that much once the season starts, either, because they’re all playing their different sports.”

Erb was involved in similar races at Hermon High School before he came to Bangor five years ago. Then he met Craig, a fellow math teacher, and the idea was planted.

“He approached me first,” said Craig. “He wanted to get the soccer team in shape, and thought it would be fun to do.”

The first year produced a head-to-head matchup between the boys soccer team and the cross country squad, and a year later the girls soccer team joined the race.

Today it’s a rare team that doesn’t participate, with many teams adjusting their preseason schedules to accommodate the race.

“Now we’re at the point where everyone enjoys it,” said Craig, “and they don’t want to miss it.”

Bangor senior Casey Quaglia, one of the state’s top distance runners who spent his first three years on the Bangor soccer team before joining the cross country team this fall, won the race. Soccer player Greg Lenz was second.

The top runner from each participating team received an award, and finishing numbers were drawn at random for other awards.

But the real winner here was school spirit.

Take members of the Bangor football team. They didn’t run the entire course, in part because of concerns about having one of the bigger players turn an ankle or become otherwise injured while out on the course far away from the school.

But after they ran two laps around the field near the starting line – about 3/4 of a mile – they turned into cheerleaders, forming a tunnel at the finish line and greeting the other finishers with words of encouragement.

“It was the captains’ idea,” said Bangor football coach Mark Hackett. “When we finished, Alex [Gallant] asked if we could make a wall and cheer on the others as they finished, and they stayed and cheered every one of the kids who ran.”

That effort wasn’t lost on the other runners in the race, or on those who staged it. It was merely evidence of what the activity was all about.

“It’s like what we do for cross country with team bonding,” Craig said. “Here all the teams are coming together. It’s not one team or another team, it’s all the same team, it’s all Bangor High students.”

“We think they’re all Bangor High School students first, and that this is a great chance for kids to be kids,” added Hackett. “We’re just glad they invited us.”

The Weiss stuff

Football definitely is a family affair for the Weisses of Rockland.

Daryle Weiss is the head coach of the Rockland High football team, which opens its season Friday at defending Eastern Maine Class C champion Foxcroft Academy.

His brother, Bill, is the middle-school coach in Rockland, as well as a youth football coach.

Bill’s son Andrew is the third-year starting quarterback and defensive back for the Rockland High team, and amassed some 4,000 total yards as a freshman and sophomore while leading the Tigers to back-to-back 5-4 seasons.

Andrew’s brother Sam is a promising freshman tailback and linebacker for the high school team.

Andrew and Sam’s brother Aaron, a seventh-grader, is a middle-school quarterback.

Andrew and Sam and Aaron’s brother Chris, a fifth-grader, plays quarterback at the youth level.

And Daryle Weiss’s son Marshall is quarterback for the third-grade team.