ORONO – Despite what Thomas Wolfe wrote, it turns out you can go home again, especially if your name happens to be Ben True.

The former Greely of Cumberland Center high school track star, now a senior at Dartmouth College, won the men’s 5-mile race at Saturday’s 17th annual Murray Keatinge Invitational cross country meet at the University of Maine and led his Big Green to the men’s team title as well.

“It’s always nice to be back. My whole family was able to come up and see it,” True said. “I just wanted to make sure everything was working right since this is my first race in a long time. Last spring, I had lots of trouble overtraining, so I wanted to be sure my body was back where it was.”

His time of 23 minutes, 57.79 seconds – a full 37 seconds ahead of runner-up Tim Ritchie of Boston College (24:34.48) – appears to have settled that issue emphatically for True.

The Dartmouth men easily outkicked second-place Yale, 28 points to 54, by placing six runners among the top 10 overall. It was the Green’s third Keatinge title in the last six years.

In the women’s 3.1-mile race, University of New Hampshire senior Kim Povec won the individual title with a time of 18:05.38.

“I think the best I’ve done before this was 20th,” said Povec, who has run the Keatinge three times. “I’ve been able to finally understand how to have fun while racing and that makes it a lot easier and more enjoyable for me. I’ve just kind of learned how to race my way. I started off around 35th place and slowly worked my way up.”

Duke University’s Blue Devils won their second straight team title with a score of 46 to edge Boston College by eight.

The University of Maine men finished fifth in the eight-team field with 135 points and the UMaine women were sixth (161 points) among seven squads.

Friday’s rains made things a bit muddy on the course for the first mile, but even those who had a little trouble managed to finish strong.

“It was slippery. I slipped on the first turn and fell down, actually,” said UMaine freshman Corey Conner, who was UMaine’s top runner with a 12th-place finish in the women’s race despite the fall. “The course was a little wet and slippery at first, and it was kind of cold, but it was fun.”

It’s that “fun” aspect of the Keatinge, plus the level of competition, that routinely draws good teams from all over the country each year.

“It’s a fun place for the girls to go and we like to find some cooler climates to get us ready for November, when we run most of our championships and need to get used to that 20-degree drop,” said Duke head coach Kevin Jermyn, whose Blue Devils are ranked 26th nationally. “It’s a good meet, placement-wise, on our schedule and it’s a great one to compete in for a lot of different reasons for us.”

Duke senior and Minnetonka, Minn., native Molly Lehman, who ran in the meet last year, looked forward to a return trip to Maine.

“I love it here. It reminds me of home,” Lehman said. “Our whole team really likes this course. It’s pretty flat and fast.”

For Lehman, simply getting out and running in a varsity meet was reason to celebrate.

“This is the first time I’ve been totally healthy in awhile,” the snake-bitten Lehman explained. “I’ve had a cold and before that I got stung by a bee, which I didn’t know I was allergic to. I also got into some poison ivy, and before that I had a hamstring problem I had to get a cortisone shot for.”

After all that, it’s easy to understand why she was practically giggling after finishing fourth in 18:11.34.

The Black Bears’ top male runner Saturday was Miles Bartlett of Casco, who cut 30 seconds off his personal-best time with a 25:11.23 and sixth-place finish.

“The first mile played out the way I thought it would,” Bartlett said. “Everyone pretty much stuck together because of that field and went through in about five minutes, Ben True took off, and then in miles two through four, it stayed pretty much a pack and on the last mile, at that first big hill, I was able to pass everyone in the pack before they passed me back on the downhill slope, but I was pretty much able to catch most of them.”

Former Bangor High standout Riley Masters was Maine’s No. 2 runner, finishing 26th with a time of 25:46.26 in his first run on the course.

“The amount of competition here is unbelievable,” said Masters, who shaved an entire minute off his best time. “The wet conditions didn’t bother me too much. It was more the cold and I just hit a wall at mile four. I just couldn’t seem to get my legs to go any faster.”

Ellsworth’s Corey DeWitt, a teammate of True’s and another former Maine high school star, finished 21st among the men with a time of 25:39.08.

aneff@bangordailynews.net

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