Inter-Ac League girls gathered at Belmont Plateau last Tuesday for a regular-season meet that featured runners from all seven schools.

Following up her first-place performance at the Abington Invitational earlier in the month, Penn Charter junior Alli DeLisi breezed to victory in Fairmount Park in a time of 19 minutes and 50.4 seconds. Fellow 11th- grader Mary Rossano of the Academy of Notre Dame was second in 20:15.7, and a freshman from Germantown Academy, Nieve Keitel, finished third in 20:31.3.

DeLisi was the Inter-Ac League champion in 2021, and last fall she finished the championship meet in second place. The 2022 champ, Notre Dame's Therese Trainer, has graduated and is now at Penn State. In the team competition last fall, Notre Dame edged out PC by six points for the Inter-Ac title.

While Charter returns DeLisi, the Quakers have lost their number two and three runners from the 2022 league meet. Twins Alex and Sam Jaffe, also juniors, are outstanding squash players on the junior circuit, and have decided to focus on that sport this year.

Last Tuesday, Penn Charter wound up third in the team scoring with 72 points, one point ahead of GA. Notre Dame placed three runners in the top nine and won the meet with 53 points, while Episcopal (whose lead runner came in fourth) was the runner-up team with 62.

After the GA Patriots came Agnes Irwin, with 96 points, Springside Chestnut Hill Academy, in sixth place with 153 points, and Baldwin School, with 197.

Following DeLisi, PC had one more runner in the top 10, as senior Grace Neuwirth landed in 10th place in 22:46.0. Freshman Jackie Plastaras was 17th in 23:54.6, and the other scorers for the Quakers were sophomore Nora Prasad (21st; 24:09.3) and freshman Chloe Greenwalt (23rd; 24:10.4).

There was promising news for GA and SCH, which both had young runners emerge as their top performers. After the freshman, Keitel, the Patriots had eighth-grader Annabelle Steckel secure eighth place overall in 21:40.3,. The Blue Devils' top three were eighth grader Bella Tinneny, 20th overall in 24:07.1, freshman Claire Lynch, who took 24th place with a time of 24:11.8, and freshman Emma Hannigan, who placed 35th in 24:54.8.

Tinneny's father, Kevin Tinneny, coached basketball at Mount St. Joseph Academy and Shipley School, and he'll work with the SCH middle school hoops program this winter.

The other three scorers for GA at last week's meet were all seniors; Abby Durkin (13th; 23:11.6), Maggie Morrissey (22nd; 24:09.9), and Lauren Perry (27th; 24:25.9).

Springside Chestnut Hill's official team score was completed by sophomore Grian O'Connor (38th; 25:01.3) and junior Emma Schwartz (44th; 25:52.2)