BELFAST - A 14-year-old boy from Belfast Area High Schoolapparently collapsed and died while running through the woods in aweekend cross country meet, authorities said Sunday.
Joseph Diprete-DiGioia of Belfast was competing Saturday in thesecond annual Maine XC Festival of Champions when he collapsed on ornear the running path behind the Troy Howard Middle School.
Police Chief Allen Weaver said the last recorded sighting ofDiprete-DiGioia was when he passed the first checkpoint.
When the freshman runner failed to emerge from the woods at thefinish line, his parents notified organizers and an extensive searchwas mounted. He was found sometime later beside the running trail atapproximately 3 p.m.
Butch Arthers, principal of the high school, was at the meet.
'This is my 14th year [as a school faculty member] and this is thefirst time we've had a student-athlete death at school occur during aseason,' Arthers said.
'He was a bright student and well-liked by everybody he hung outwith,' Arthers said.
The death was not considered suspicious, and an autopsy will beperformed to determine its cause.
The school department reacted to the death by organizing itscrisis team and scheduling counseling sessions.
Grief counselors were made available Sunday afternoon at the highschool. Support staff will also be available for Belfast Area HighSchool and Troy Howard Middle School students during the week, saidBob Young, SAD 34 superintendent.
'We're certainly very sad about what happened and very sympatheticto what the family is going through at this time,' Young said Sunday.'We will have the staff in place to try and keep things as normal aspossible, which is difficult in a case like this. Anything like thishas a sobering and moving effect on a school because it happensunpredictably. We are working with our crisis team and it was a verysomber group that met here this morning.'
Diprete-DiGioia was competing in the second race of the day whenhe collapsed. There were about 160 runners in his group.
Two more races were held after the race Diprete-DiGioia was in.
Weaver said more than 550 runners from across the state took partin the all-day event.
Arthers said he was unsure what the death would mean for theschool's cross country team. 'I don't know their plans. They're goingto get together after school [Monday] and talk about what's going tohappen.'
Ryan McLaughlin, a Bangor Daily News sports clerk who was doing astory on the meet, was present when word of the death spreadSaturday.
'During the course of the awards ceremony, the Belfast athleteswere going in and out of the gym as I was doing an interview, so Ithought something was up,' McLaughlin said.
McLaughlin attended the meet with the Brewer High School crosscountry team and learned of Diprete-DiGioia's death from Brewer coachGlendon Rand, who announced it to the team on the bus.
'It's just a tragic ending to what had been a great day. We wereall shocked and everyone got real quiet,' McLaughlin said.
The Belfast course is 3.1 miles and is also the site of the highschool cross country championships for eastern Maine.
NEWS sportswriter Andrew Neff contributed to this story.
