BEVERLY — As he came down the hill at Lynch Park Thursday night with nothing but the finish line in front of him, Will Aylward wasn’t thinking about winning the Beverly Yankee Homecoming 5K Road Race.
He just wanted to stay upright.
“I honestly almost fell coming down the hill,” the 24-year-old Aylward, who didn’t and ultimately finished first in a time of 16:14, said with a chuckle. “I just wanted to stay on my feet and keep it together.”
A former Peabody High track and field standout who ran at Franklin Pierce University, Aylward outlasted 16-year-old Beverly High junior-to-be Charlie Bossler (16:20) for the win. Anthony Pizzo, another Peabody native, placed third at 16:32.
Paige Lawler, who hails from Lexington but is now living in Beverly, was the female winner in 18:30. That bested the second place time of Elizabeth Lombardo of Wakefield (19:03) and Hillsboro, Missouri’s Allison Wakeland (20:09), who claimed third place.
The event, put by the YMCA of the North Shore as part of its road race series, saw 553 runners cross the finish line. They ranged in age 3-year-old Maddi Abelli of Beverly (who finished in 33:49) to 81-year-old John Van Maanen of Nahant, who crossed the finish line in 35:51.
On a beautiful summer night to run — cloud cover and a cool ocean breeze, with temperatures close to 70 degrees — Aylward picked up his second Beverly 5K Homecoming title. The first was markedly different; in searing 90-plus degree heat, he finished first (a year after taking place) in 16:40.
“I’ve run this race four or five times, and this one I was able to run a lot more smoothly than two years ago,” Aylward, who has moved to New Hampshire for grad school at Franklin Pierce, said.
“I was out front of Charlie and started to lose him over the last mile or so. He fought back, but I was able to go out in front of him with about 500-600 meters to go and hold him off.”
Bossler, who like his twin sister Chloe runs track and field at Beverly High, didn’t even start running until he reached at high school. His mother Ruth, who also ran Thursday night (finishing as the 11th female runner in 22:07), won a state cross country championship in Fairfield, Conn. in 1985; she got her two children involved in the sport.
“I didn’t have any expectations going into this,” said the affable Bossler. “I came in thinking I’d pace my friend for a personal best for him, but in that last mile I decided to go for it and ended up hitting my PR by 40 seconds.
“(Aylward) was ahead of me for about the first two-thirds of the race before I passed him, but he had an extra gear late,” admitted Bossler. “It’s still very early in the (upcoming cross country) season for me, so I wasn’t trying to push myself too hard. I wasn’t going for place, I was going for time … and I’m very happy with that.”
Lawler figured this was the first time she had run a 5K since college at Washington University in St. Louis; she runs marathons now. She hit a PR in Boston this past spring in a fine time of 3:02.37.
“I ran this race back in high school with some friends, so it was fun to come back and do it again,” Lawler, who recently finished her first year at UMass Medical School in Worcester, said. “My dad Tom grew up in Beverly and we’ve known this area for a long time, so this was cool to be back.”
Other locals who finished in their respective Top 10s were, for the men, Calvin Barrett (5th, 17:50), Sean Richardson (7th, 17:04), David Plotkin (8th, 17:22) and David DiPietro (10th, 17:37), all of Beverly; and Drew Fossa of Peabody (6th, 16:52).
For the women, Beverly’s Grace Corbett (4th, 20:50), Tara MacNeill (7th, 21:22), Maureen O’Reilly (8th, 21:26) and Tatum Panjwani (10th, 21:39) all had Top 10 finishes, as did Abby Walsh of Salem (5th, 21:13) and Mary Herchenhahn of Marblehead (9th, 21:30).
Contact Phil Stacey
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