AUBURN — The St. Dominic Academy girls’ cross country team didn’t have its best showing at last weekend’s Festival of Champions in Belfast.

Prior to the meet, co-coach Josh Brown said he was looking forward to seeing how the Saints stacked up against other elite Class C teams. The verdict: Despite an overall substandard showing, St. Dom’s stacks up nicely.

Had the Festival of Champions been the Class C state championship meet, the Saints would have finished third behind George Stevens and Orono. Without even having a good meet, St. Dom’s proved itself to be in the state championship mix.

But Ella Brown, as an experienced senior and team captain, isn’t casting her eyes that far ahead.

“Our goals for this season are just to continue to get better as the season goes on, be competitive at the championship meets” Brown said.

She doesn’t, though, deny the Saints’ potential: “This is definitely the most competitive team we’ve had in a while. So that’s exciting.”

The strength of the team is the team, from top to bottom. There are still more than three weeks remaining before the Oct. 29 state meet, and therefore plenty of time for improvement, but currently St. Dom’s doesn’t appear to have an individual title contender.

So, in an individual sport, the Saints are saying “we” more than they say “I.”

“We want to win states,” sophomore Bugsy Hammerton said. “But we’re just taking it one day at a time — that’s our motto.”

Hammerton was St. Dom’s highest finisher at the Festival of Champions, placing 27th, and has been the team’s fastest runner in three of six races this season. She’s also new to the team in 2016, as is Caroline Gastonguay, who has the Saints’ best time in two races this season.

“They’ve definitely brought a lot (to the team),” Ella Brown said. “We wouldn’t be as good without them.”

Hammerton and Gastonguay give credit to their teammates — Brown, Megan D’Alessandro, Sydney Sirois, Dasha Fors, Emily Gerencer and Amelie Crowe — most of whom have much more cross country experience, for their smooth transition:

“I just came into it and everyone was really open. We just have a lot of fun together,” Hammerton said.

“If I didn’t have them, I don’t know what I’d be doing. Really. When I came into it, I thought I would just run and try to pace yourself, but there’s so much more to it than that.”

Teamwork is part of cross country, according to D’Alessandro, who is one of three seniors on the team, along with Brown and Sirois.

“I think it’s more of a team sport than people think it is,” D’Alessandro said, “because you really need to work together to accomplish your goals. You can’t win a race with just one person; you need everyone to do their best.

“We’re really encouraging and there’s definitely kind of a camaraderie with us…”

Gastonguay interjected: “We’re like a family.”

“Yeah,” D’Alessandro continued, “we push each other. If we see someone on the course, we’re like, ‘Good job. You can do it. Keep working.’”

“It’s a really fun training environment,” Ella Brown said. “I’d say we’re all friends, so that makes it really fun.”

Last year, the Saints ran to a fifth-place finish in Class C. This season, they’ve moved from the Mountain Valley Conference to the Western Maine Conference. It has been a large step up, competition-wise, for the Saints. But they’ve stepped up to that level.

“It’s been good. The girls are holding their own,” Josh Brown, who shares coaching duties with his wife Krista, said. “I mean, we’re holding our own versus all the Western Maine Conference A and B teams. If you look at the head-to-head record, we have a winning record in the conference.

“So that’s a testament to how good this girls’ team is, and how good they’ll do once we get into the Class C competitions at the end of the season.”

That includes the WMC championship, the Western regional, and yes, even the Class C state championship meet. The Saints are focusing on one day at a time, but they also realize that they have the potential to win the state title.

“It’s kind of an unspoken goal. We say, ‘We have the opportunity to do something special,’” Josh Brown said. “We’ll see when we get there.We’re good enough to do it but … we’ve got to have five good races on that day. And frankly, we haven’t done that yet this season.

“But somebody’s got to do it every year, right?”