The Northwestern girls team edged out Parkland to win last year's annual cross country meet at DeSales University.

A year later, both teams found themselves right among the top of the pack once again. Unfortunately for the Lady Tigers, they were the ones coming up short of back-to-back first-place finishes.

Carly Pierce finished in 13th place with a time of 20:16.21 to lead a group of four Lady Tigers that finished in the top 25 runners. Rachel Mikols (18th), Molly Tarvin (20th) and Paige Stitzel (24th) helped the Lady Tigers finish second at Saturday's 35th Annual DeSales Centaur Invitational, just three points behind first-place finisher Parkland.

"We definitely wanted to get first, but we took a huge loss losing Haley [Yost] this year," Pierce said. "We knew we had some definite challenges to make up for. We didn't get them this time, but we'll see them again at districts and states."

While DeSales' course may provide challenges to most runners with its uneven terrain, the Lady Tigers are familiar with hilly races back in New Tripoli. That may have given them a slight advantage.

"It was definitely a hard course, but we're pretty good at hills," Pierce said. "Our school has a lot of hills all of the time. It's probably not as bad for us as some of the other schools."

Southern Lehigh's Meseret Hart captured first place in the girls' 5K race in a time of 19:23.04. Marian Catholic's Tina Capparell (19:31.94) and Northampton's Lyndsey Gallagher (19:36.01) rounded out the top three.

Pierce's mindset going in was to take it easy early on, and stick with the front of the pack in preparation for the up-and-down section of the course.

"I felt like I ran a good first mile because a lot of people get sucked into a fast first mile since it's so flat, and the rest of the course is so hilly," Pierce said. "I feel like I ran that well.

"I didn't want to push it too fast because then you'll die on the hills. You just want to find a good path to stick with, and try not to get into the whole 'you need to be in the front' thing."

In the last mile of the race, Pierce saw an opportunity to make up some ground, and take advantage in a section of the course where she excels. That final stretched propelled her into that 13th-place finish.

"Going into the second forest where the last two hills are is really where I like to make my move because a lot of people are dying by then," Pierce said. "It's really good to just push through the hills because you're almost done by that point."

Her goal was to earn a medal coming into the meet. She did that and a little more.

"I was pretty happy with it," Pierce said. "My goal was to get a medal and get in the top 20 hopefully."

Brayden Heller finished in 24th place in the boys' race, as the Tigers finished 16th out of 27 participating teams.

Parkland also took first in the boys' competition, finishing with three runners in the top 13. Hatboro Horsham's Casey Comber took first (15:57.82), Pleasant Valley's Seth Slavin came in second (16:16.83) and Souderton's Connor McMenamin placed third (16:27.32).