Div 1 relays - 19-Jan-07

Newsflash:

For those of you who didn’t hear, Newton North won a very tight meet against Brookline 44-42 on Thursday. Both NN and Brookline were there at the relays, dueling it out again, in many races.

On to the relays:

Since I’ve been doing a bit of volunteer coaching for NS, I decided to go whole hog and do the complete coaching experience, taking the bus, helping with the entries, in addition to my favorite obsessive-compulsive-disorder hobby, taking relay splits.

When we got off the bus, we were the first inside Reggie, but rapidly followed by Andover, who resembled a minor army – all dressed in identical uniform. They marched across the infield and took up a position directly behind the start-finish line.

Not only were there some huge performances, but a lot of kids who don’t normally run relays were out there. We had a lot of distance kids doing 4x400m relays, many of whom ran much faster than their expectations. I did, however hear some “I don’t want to ever run a 400 again…”, afterwards. Geeze, it’s my favorite race. Some of the girls who were used to distances like 2 miles ran in 4x4’s. They wondered what times they might run. I suggested that anything under 70 seconds was something to be happy with.

First up was the fabled 4x800m relay, with our A team of Juliet Ryan-Davis, Diana Braver, and Bridget Dahlberg. There was also a B team of Kelsy Karys, Kathy O’Keefe, Nina Slote and Kyle Remy. They were going up against the Lincoln-Sudbury fab four. In some ways, with LS’es declared intention to take over the World, er, National record in the 4x800, it takes some of the heat off.

At the gun, Juliet took it out real fast, and stayed close to Jess Griffin, splitting in a fast 2:20.22. Juliet has had some amazing times this season, including a 5:16 mile in the last DCL meet. Diana got the baton from Juliet, and ran a fast 2:22, but a bit of a gap opened up, midway through the leg with the second LS runner. Diana regained some ground, but not enough. With a gap at that point, it was harder for Julia and Bridget to get the pace, but they split 2:24 and 2:23 respectively, for a 9:29.76. This is the third fastest time in the country this year. Not bad.

LS ran a 9:15.95, which is the fastest time in the country, and demolishes their old record in this event, set last year.

Kelsy, Kathy, Nina and Kyle split 2:28, 2:26, 2:35 and 2:32 for a 10.01 – which is a great time.

In the boys 800, Sasha Long, Tal Inbar, John Beck and Will Cha ran 2:03.7, 2:10, 2:06.5 and 2:05.2 for an 8:25.5. Unfortunately, Sasha banged his knee in the raucous leadoff and had to get a substitute in the 4x4.

Newton North’s Seb Putzeys split a 1:57 on the leadoff of the seeded heat of the 4x8. Brockton eventually took it with an 8:15 and a scorching anchor leg by Carlos Montrond.

The sprint medley relay is one of trickiest relays around. You have an incoming 800 meter runner handing off to an outgoing 200 meter runner, which is a huge mismatch in speed, which can lead to lots of tough situations on the handoffs. We had a girls A team of Hannah Westbrook, Zoe Demple, Katie Sandson and Sara Chari, and a B team of Sony Freeman, Mary Kate Cronin, Rachel Rubinstein, and Elizabeth May. Remember the legs are 800-200-200-400.

The A team ran 2:33, 28.7, 33.1 and 67.6 for a 4:43.8, the B team ran 2:36.3, 30.8, 29.7 and 70.5.

Things to note, Katie had a difficult handoff to deal with that nearly went awry and cost her time on the relay split. Rachel was overjoyed to hear that she’s dropped under 30 second for the first time. She also PR’ed in the hurdles on Tuesday, dropping into the 10’s for the first time. So, it was quite a week for her.

In the boys SMR (sprint medley relay), we had an A team of Yuji Wakimoto, Jeff Atkins, Will Iacobucci and Ben Olins. They ran splits of 2:05.7, 25, 28.2 and 56.3.

Yuji’s split in the 800 was very impressive – he ran at a good pace, and didn’t let an early fast runner who later died (figuratively speaking, of course), rattle him.

In the 4x200, we had Pebbles Banks to Elli Ellis to Sarah Marquis to Azeezah Gray. They ran a scorching time of 1:50.77 to place 4th overall. Splits were 27.2, 26.9, 29.3 and 27.0.

The boys 4x200 – a long saga from the past. Last year’s team had Gerald and James on it, and the group seemed cursed by the fates, with one disqualification after another haunting them. I think they made four tries at qualifying for states, each time running well under the mark, but getting a disqualification each time. This time, they had Yong Cho to James, to Georgiy to Gerald, and got it done. The time of 1:35.9 beat their seed, and they came in first in their heat. The curse was reversed – and they handily qualified for the states. Splits were 23.7, 23.9, 24.6 and 23.6. They all felt they could run faster. Plenty of chances for that.

In the girls distance medley relay, we had two teams, an A team of Juliet Ryan-Davis, Julia Frieze, Diana Braver and Bridget Dahlberg. The B team consisted of Kathy O’Keefe, Dani Pensack, Kyle Remy and Kelsey Karys. Remember that legs are 1200-400-800-1600. The girls ran well, taking spots 2 and 3 in 12:35 and 12:49, which are great times.

The drama, of course, had to do with Lincoln-Sudbury’s presence. Bridget got the baton some distance behind LS’es Andrea Keklak and quickly closed the gap, and ran many laps just in front of Andrea, who looked pretty fresh. In the last 200 meters, Andrea kicked and Bridget couldn’t come back on her, but ran her fastest mile time this season in 5:08. We’ve seen a lot of strong doubles in the last week and a half from the crew of Juliet, Andrea, Bridget and Julia.


The shuttle hurdle relay for the boys had all underclassmen in them, with Jeff Atkins, Yong Cho, Ben Weisman and Dan Connolly. They took 11th overall, and won their heat – twice. The ‘twice’ was because the timing camera didn’t work in the first heat, so they were called back. It wasn’t a huge problem, as they pretty much ran the same time as in the live rehearsal. This bodes well.

In the girls shuttle dash, there was Pebbles Banks, Katie, Dani and Azeezah. Candace is still out with a foot injury, but we’re hoping to see her back soon. Despite Candace’s absence, the relay took third overall, and second in their heat to Andover. In many of these races, particularly the girls, we kept clipping up points on the board. In fact, the combination of Andover, Lincoln-Sudbury and Newton South was what one coach termed “a big point vacuum cleaner, leaving the rest of us to pick up random points lying around here and there.”

The boys DMR ran an 11:26 for 10th – Cameron Fen, Emerson Shui, Ben Finch and Andrew Wortham.

The girls 4x400 relay was actually a lot of fun. We had one sprint crew of Madeline Frieze, Amrita Rao, Dahlia Tomlin and Andrea Braver and one distance crew of Clair O’Brien, Tessa Ruben, Samantha Levy and Melanie Fineman. They dueled in their heat, back and forth. Ben and I rooted for our favorites (I was sprint, he was distance). The sprinters eventually pulled it out. Notable splits included Andrea’s 65 and Melanie’s 66.
This was a pretty young crew and for most of them, their first exposure to a 4x400 relay.

The boys 4x400 was more intense. Tal Inbar had to substitute for Sasha Long, after his knee got banged up in the 4x800. They ended up in the top seeded heat, and ran a 3:35.7, to take 6th overall. Gerald Arneauld ran a scorching 49.6 anchor leg. I can tell you from personal experience that that 50-second barrier is one of the most difficult roadblocks to get over – I don’t know precisely why, but it seems akin to trying to cross the sound barrier.

But, in many ways, the big news of the day was the girls’ performance in the field events, taking first in the shotput relay, and the high jump relay. Add to this a third place in the long-jump, NS vacuumed up beaucoup points from the field events. The shotput relay was Elizabeth Jeyaraj, Nalis Mbianda and Ashley Dennis. The high jump relay was Ellie Ellis, Diana Braver and Kathryn Ellis. The long jump relay was Sarah Marquis, Christie Lee and Ellie Ellis.

At the end of the meet, the girls long-jump was the last event to be competed. Newton South had a narrow, two point lead over Andover at this point, with Andover, Boston Latin, Brockton and a few other schools left to compete. We had a very good long jump score, but we knew that those schools could score. Well, it took two record breaking jumps to knock us out of first place. The field events were “huge for us” (quoting Matt), and as much testimony to the coaches as much as to the athletes. Joanne, Dennis and Matt cover those events nearly every day and have been working on form all season.

Boston Latin and Andover manage to set record jumps to place above us. This was enough to elevate Andover to first place. Andover had 58 points, NS was second in 56 points, and LS was third in 46. The Andover coach was quoted as saying that beating LS and NS was “like winning the lottery.”

As the last flights were taking place, Reggie had cleared out, and only the Weymouth, Andover and Newton-South teams remained, watching the long jump flights. I said to Matt, “Wow, it looks like both we and Andover are the first in, and the last out.” Matt replied “Yeah, but maybe you can spot a significant difference between the two teams?”

I scanned the Andover bench, full of upright, identically uniformed kids, parents and coaches, very disciplined. I then looked over the Newton South stands, and saw random tie died shirts, every imaginable sweat pant, spandex, headband, hat, overcoat, you name it, legs and arms sprawled across the stands. It was a veritable band of gypsies. I briefly thought about what it would be like to be an Andover parent, and then thought about my days in California and Oregon, dancing to the Grateful Dead at Ken Kesey’s farm, and decided I’d rather hang with the gypsies.

Go Lions!