NEW CANAAN—Ridgefield senior Richie Hume beat his closest opponent by nine seconds at the Fairfield County Interscholastic Athletic Conference Cross Country Championships at Waveny Park on Oct. 22.

Hume, a co-captain for all three running seasons, won the boys 5,000-meter race in 16:20, beating a field of nearly 130 competitors.

“I wanted to win the race," Hume said the following day. "I knew I had some pretty stiff competition, because there were some pretty good guys there … I just hung onto the leaders for the first half of the race and then took the lead halfway through and just kept on running as fast as I could.”

Boys running coach David McCluskey called Hume's performance outstanding but not surprising.

"I didn't expect that he was going to lose that race," McCluskey said. "I was kind of surprised that he had such a large lead ... in a race like that, nine seconds is probably like 50 meters, and those were some very talented young men that he was competing against."

But when Hume starts a race, McCluskey added, "He kind of puts his race face on and he's ready to go."

Danbury won the overall boy's competition with 60 points, followed by Darien with 65. Staples High School and Ridgefield both ended with 73 points, but Staples won the tiebreaker and Ridgefield took fourth place.

In the girl's race, Ridgefield senior Katherine Howley finished third with a time of 14:57, following behind only Warde's Meg Ryan (14:03) and Westhill's Maddie Elkins (14:47).

Ridgefield's girls team came in third place overall with 89 points. First was Warde High School (63 points) and second was Wilton (66 points).

Full FCIAC Cross Country Championship results are here.