Photo: Some of the ladies and their "for-sure" team championship plaque.
click here for PHOTOS by M. Hergrueter
click here for PHOTOS by S. Chari
The frosh/soph meet is a great chance for the underclasspersons (if that's the proper word now) to shine. Shine, they did, along with the sun.
Matt Capstick had to staff the Marathon Sports booth at the Boston Marathon Expo this weekend and Steven asked me if I'd go with him to the frosh/soph meet. I agreed, but Matt and Steven neglected the part about the 7 AM bus departure.
Steven and I worked on Friday afternoon with the relay squads, not entirely sure who was competing and who wasn't because of all of the confusion of vacations and schedules. A lot of kids were running relays for the first time, and some were running some distances for the first time (e.g. Dan Connolly in the 400m).
I bought a tee shirt that said "Newton South Athletics" and figured that if I wore that and had a stop watch around my neck, and a clipboard by my side, people would mistake me for a coach.
Fast forward to Saturday morning: the sun was barely peaking over the trees. None of the kids getting onto the bus looked particularly awake. I know I wasn't, and even the quadruple espresso from Starbucks couldn't cut through the general grogginess. A key runner didn't show up, but we had to get the bus going down to Hingham - reworking the relay line-ups while driving down 128. I lost track of how many relay substitutions were made for this meet, but I can see that we clearly don't pay our coaches enough.
When we arrived at Notre Dame Academy, Steven held a brief meeting of the team, saying that the main goal for the meet was for the kids to have fun, and even had them give a pledge "I [state your name] promise that I will have fun at the meet today."
We met Rick Kates, the meet director and head coach at Notre Dame Academy. Rick had recently been elected to the MSTCA coaching hall of fame, and Steven organized the team to make a nice card for him as a way of congratulations. Rick said that there were 1440 athletes competing that day from 22 schools.
Since we were nearly one of the first teams to show up, we were able to secure a defensible position on a hill next to the track.
I accompanied Kayla Jackson, our lone javelin thrower, to the throwing field. Kayla warmed up, but was in the third flight - so we watched the first two flights compete. Kayla's really coming along - her form is getting there, and she understands the basic principles behind a good jav throw. The first two flights weren't the hottest I've seen, but the throwers were just starting out, I guess. The third flight was the seeded one and had a girl that looked like a guy from Brookline named Nika. Nika dominated the competition with seeming ease, although her voice was kinda low, too, and even the official seemed baffled. But, there were Nika supporters in the hill next to the competition who cheered her throws, so she must be legit. Kayla threw a great 83'7" to take third, which is out of about 35 competitors from 12 schools. She seemed pretty happy about that, but wanted to hustle back to see the running events.
The two mile had already run by the time I got back to the oval. Sara Chari and Madeleine Reed took 1-2 with times of 11:45 and 11:50.
Word filtered back that Cora Visnik and Katie Sandson took 1-2 in the pole vault with jumps of 9-00 and 8'6" - which both broke the previous meet record.
By this time, heats were being run in the 100m, 100m hurdles, and 110m hurdles. Katie Sandson easily won her heat to advance, as did Willi Iacobucci. Dan Connolly advanced in the hurdles.
In the mile, Kathy O'Keefe went out a little fast, and basically ran the seeded heat all alone from in front. She split a 2:30 first half-mile, but held on and ran a 5:16.34, to take first, which is a near-PR for her.
The results from the boys high jump was encouraging, with Newton South taking places 4-6-7, Gus Hergrueter leading in 5'6", Andre Scott in 5'4" and Alex Karys in 5'2" - pretty darn good!
In the boys mile, Yujii Wakimoto ran in a very tight duel, following close behind a runner from Archbishop Feehan until trying to put a move on him during the last turn. The Feehan runner responded, but Yujii still had more in the locker, and notched it up with a kick in the straightaway, taking first in 4:43.39. As the mile was running, Steven and I were working frantically with Cora Visnik to get relay steps down to Katie Sandson. Cora was replacing our missing runner in the 4x1, and the only time we could practice was during the mile. That was pretty frantic.
Next up was the 400m dash. Andrea Braver ran a spectacular 1:01.24 to take second, closely dueling with a Waltham runner on the backstretch.
In the boys pole vault Chris Chueng took 2nd in 10-00. There was some bad news, however, Hai Jin Chung rolled his ankle in the triple jump. He was our third leg on the boys 4x100m relay. The alternate, Andre Scott, was scheduled for the 200m dash, and hadn't practiced handoffs at all - in fact, didn't really know the sprint handoffs. So I told him to run his heat of the 200 and we'd teach him the hand-off afterward.
Kwame Francis-John ran a great race and took first in the 200m dash!!
After that, we rapidly assembled the 4x100m squad, with Andre out of breath, and tried to go through the sprint-handoff drill as fast as we could, while the loudspeaker was already making calls for the relays. He could barely catch his breath after the trial runs through the handoffs, and I had to apologize, saying "Look, I know this isn't the best of circumstances, but we have not choice at this point." Anyway, we got one decent trial and called it Good Enuf for Government Work. I sent them off to check in, and then ran around the infield trying to make sure the relays were checking in properly - which wasn't always the case.
Walking over to the Newton South encampment, I heard a loud boombox blaring, and asked around whether anyone had heard the calls for the relays. I was met with puzzled stares. Of course they didn't hear the calls for the relays - the friggin music was too loud!! I got them to turn it down. It did seem like a fun party - but ya gotta take care of business, first. Maybe they took Steven's "fun pledge" at total face value?
In the 100m dash finals Katie Sandson took 4th in 12.25, Will Iacobucci took 8th. Dan Connolly took sixth in the hurdle finals.
In the 4x100 meter relays - the heat assignments were a bit rushed by some of the officials who probably had BBQ's that afternoon. For a moment, it looked like our girls 4x1 team would run all alone in the last heat - then, finally a couple of other teams showed up. People were milling around on the track, and Katie Sandon's view of incoming Cora Visnik was obscured by the millers-around - the handoff wasn't the cleanest, but they got it around for 7th overall.
In the boys 4x100 meter relay, the handoffs looked surprisingly good, given how little practice they had. It was Ben Weissman to Gus Hergrueter to Andre to Willi Iacobucci - running in 48.6 which was good for 4th place.
The girls' 4x400m relay with Kathy O'Keefe (66) to Andrea Braver (61.4) to Amrita Rao (69) to Madeleine Reed (65) ran a 4:23.8 to take 2nd overall to Pinkerton (NH). Note that three of the four girls running were distance runners - including a two miler. Not bad at all!
The boys 4x400m relay had Yuji (57) to Luke (59.9) to Dan (58.5) to Kwame (55.2) to take fourth overall in 3:51.5.
I was pretty happy with all the relays, particularly given that we had runners who had never done a 400m before (Dan, Madeleine) and a bunch of rushed substitutions (Cora, Andre) that very day. They performed magnificently.
Walking over to the boys 4x400m team, who were walking through the infield, I was about to debrief them, when Rick Kates, the organizer of the event, came running up to me and said "You won the team award!" He then handed me the plaque. I looked at the boys, who seemed about ready to burst, and then at Rick and said. "Newton South - you sure about this?" He said "yeah, I'm totally sure. Congratulations." And then he ran back to the scorers table. The boys looked at me, and said "wow, we won the team competition..." and then were off to our encampment to celebrate and take a victory lap. I have to say that I was kind of surprised, but I know we'd taken a couple of firsts and a bunch of seconds, thirds and fourths. So, what the heck? Carpe Diem.
The girls results weren't final at that point - the long jump was still being contested, with Christie Lee and Andrea Braver making it into the finals. The whole team was sitting on the sidelines of the runway. I recall one moment when Andrea was getting ready for her jump, and I started to do the "long jump clap" - Andrea shot me a look, and I stopped. This was good for a laugh all around. Christie jumped a 15'7 1/2" - good for 2nd place and qualifies for states. Andrea took 6th in a 15' 0.5".
With a bunch of firsts - 2 mile, mile, pole vaule and some good relays and other places it looked like we had good scoring - and indeed, it was good enough for the team trophy. So, some of the girls all took a victory lap on that one. The rest of the team was on the bus and we got everyone out for some photos of the double-team win with both plaques. The mood was very happy on the bus! It was a beautiful sunny day, and a huge number of people ran or competed much better than expected.
I got home and was firing up the BBQ myself, and started to page through the coolrunning summary of the events - if nothing else, than to get the full name of the jav thrower from Brookline. I noticed at the bottom of the boys score that it had New Bedford first in the team scoring for the boys. At that moment, my heart sunk. I looked through the results and saw that New Bedford took first in the high jump, long jump, hurdles and 100m dash, in addition to some high places in the relays and other events, like the 300m hurdles.
A quick calculation showed to me that NB had definitely outscored us. So, as of this writing, I'm scratching my head. It looks like the girls indeed won the team title outright, but the boys result remains a mystery to me. Why did Rick run over to me on the infield to give me the plaque? In retrospect, I suppose I could have asked to see the scoring, but I'd been so busy worrying about getting kids checked in, boom boxes turned down etc, it didn't occur to me to recheck Rick's results.
Stay tuned - I guess we'll find out what happened.
Still it was tremendous performance by both the NS girls AND boys - the future of track at NS looks very bright - AND the kids did have fun. I'll send an update when I find out what happened with the boys results.
Go Lions!
John Huth
Postscript - I ran the Heartbreak Hill Fun Run today - a large number of the NS team were out, helping out. It was a fun to have the tables turned and be the one running while they looked on. I took third in the old-guys age group - but in an odd twist of fate - the trophy for third place was missing.
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