At the Mass All-State Meet

When I finally got home Friday night -- after shaking hands with the few remaining members of the Brookline boys team, the most surprised state champions I've ever seen -- I was emotionally and physically exhausted. I honestly think it would be easier to run two races, than to follow the meet the way I do, trying to watch every event, trying to tally and project scores, riding a roller coaster of hopes and trying to integrate everything that I'm seeing into a coherent picture.

The feeling persisted into Saturday morning, and not even a long quick run as the snow started falling was enough to bring my feet completely back to earth. It's only today that I feel like I have any amount of perspective on the meet.

It was a very tough meet for the Newton North girls. Having run very well last Saturday at the Div. I meet, nothing seemed to go right at the state meet. Alex Blenis had one very good looking jump to clear opening height in the HJ, and then didn't really have any goot attempts at 5'. Kat Chiong started slowly in her heat of the 600 and spent the rest of the race boxed in or tripping over the heels of slower runners. Jess Barton ran aggressively to lead a tremendous field through the first mile of the 2-mile, but was stricken with a side stitch with 7 laps to go and could finish only 6th in 11:11.70. North's other entrant in the event, Haleigh Smith, ran five laps on an injured ankle before dropping out when the discomfort became too great. Leah Weisman ran an excellent time of 9.03 in the hurdles, but didn't make the finals. In the final event of the meet, the 4x400 team (Chiong, Emma Kornetsky, Weisman, Lily Brown) fell behind early and ran well below its potential to finish out of the top ten.

Track is funny. When one small thing goes wrong, a whole race or even a whole meet can completely unravel. It doesn't mean the NN girls aren't good -- we all know they will come back and be a state contender next year, but even good teams and good runners have bad days. It's always unfortunate when that happens in the biggest meet.

The boys competition was remarkable both for some unexpected heroics, but mostly for the plethora of shocking mishaps and missed opportunities. After the Div I meet, I was convinced that Lexington couldn't lose the state team title. But there appears to be a curse on Lexington. Having already lost Darius Walker from the 55 dash (disqualified in the Div I meet for jumping on the HJ mats), the Minutemen saw a potential 16 points in the 1000 shrink to 2 points when an injured Willi Ballenthin could finish no better than 6th, and Bryan Longo failed to place. All-everything athlete Meikle Paschal had to leave the HJ to run the 600, and although he took 2nd in the 600, that killed any chance he had in the vertical jump, and he had to settle for 5th and another 2 points. Even after these disasters, Lexington was still in contention for the team title when their winning 4x200 team was disqualified for passing out of the exchange zone.

Lexington's misfortunes opened the door for Xaverian, but the X-men couldn't take advantage. Although Mark Amirault won the mile with relative ease, William Stillman, who has cleared 6'7", failed to place in the high jump or the hurdles (injury?), and Alec Bleday, seeded 4th in the 1000, finished dismally to score no points. Even Xaverian's 4x800 team with Amirault on anchor could muster no better than 3rd.

It looked like all it would take to win the team title was a score in the low 20's, and Newton North had a shot. David Polgar picked up a point in the mile, which was somewhat disappointing, but David Smith regained his mid-season form to place 2nd in the shot put. (Methuen's Cory Murray, who hadn't lost a shot put competition all year, could only manage 3rd, costing Methuen a valuable 4 points).

It turned out that 55 dash would be the strongest event for North, as Cailean Robinson placed second in a FAT school record 6.62, and Gordon Forbes placed 6th, giving Newton North 9 points for the event. The Tigers picked up another two points in the 4x800 relay, as Noah Jampol, Seb Putzeys, Peter Sun, and Dave Polgar ran 8:08.20, a very good time, and Newton North was in the lead going into the final relay with 20 points.

But right behind was Brookline, which had picked up 19 points in two events. The first 10 of those points came from Matt Stewart, who won the 600 out of the unseeded heat; the other 9 came from Robert Gibson and Adam Kaye who finished 2nd and 6th in the two mile. This was good fortune for the warriors as Kaye's 6th place was quite unexpected, made possible by the illness of Hopedale's Thompson Ogilvie, and the mysterious sub-par performance of José DePina.

The stage was set for the 4x400 relay, and with everything on the line, the Newton North quartet of Cailean Robinson, Abbas Watanabe, Alex Lee, and Avery Mitchell seemed to have pulled off a miracle running a season's best 3:28.74 to win the penultimate heat. They just needed to be faster than Brookline and they would win the State title for the 3rd year in a row. But Brookline didn't falter, and with Stewart running a 50.8 anchor, the Warriors recorded a time of 3:28.69 -- an excruciating 0.07 seconds faster than the Tigers -- and the state title was theirs by a score of 23 to 22 points.

Link to full results

A final word on the indoor season: congratulations to all who ran PR's won championships, and competed at the highest levels. And to all those athletes whose seasons ended too soon, or who came up short of the standard you set for yourself, there will be many more chances to show what you can do.

Some athletes will now prepare for the New England championships, some for the national meets in New York or Maryland, and others will start looking forward to outdoor. Good luck to all!