In preparing for yesterday’s 72nd New England Interscholastic Cross Country Championships at Ponaganset High School, North Kingstown boys coach Paul Tetreault says he borrowed a page out of the playbook of legendary high school coach Joe Newton.

The York (Ill.) High School coach, whose teams have won upwards of 26 state titles on a course that includes a 90-degree turn shortly after the start, holds his runners back for 3 seconds, then has them stay to the right, said Tetreault.

He gave his Skippers similar advice to help them navigate the somewhat tricky start on the Covered Bridge Trail, which begins on an open field in front of Ponaganset’s tennis courts, but then funnels down pretty quickly while also making a left-hand turn around a soccer wall.

``Just from watching last week’s race, there’s almost a bog down and some kids are basically running in place,’’ Tetreault said. ``Then somebody goes down and then you get the domino effect. So we talked about perhaps not going out quite as fast and swinging to the outside to the right. You may run a little bit farther, but you’re going to maintain your momentum and your pace and all that. And that’s pretty much what we did.’’

It proved to be an effective strategy, as North Kingstown finished 8th in a field of 30 teams and was the top Rhode Island boys team. Paced by Brandon Burns’ 38th-place finish (16:42), NK also received scoring from Mitch Leveille (16:52), Kyle Moriarty (17:09), Nate Wigton (17:21) and Gary Largess (17:44).

''Our guys were sky high after last week,’’ said Tetreault, whose Skippers won their first state crown in 16 years and only the second in the program’s history. ``So trying to bring them back down to earth was tough. We were initially talking top 10 (for New England’s), but after the state meet, we started readjusting and started thinking maybe we had a shot at top 5. So we kind of fell in the middle there, and that’s a good finish.’’