Winterfest!

Only two days after their first dual meet, Newton North athletes took to the track again on Saturday for the Winterfest meet at RLC. This year the meet was split into a large-schools meet on Saturday and a small-schools meet on Sunday. From the Bay State league, only Newton North and Wellesley chose to compete.

On the girls side, there were some nice improvements across the board(s).

In the 55H, North had six competitors in the prelims, and two athletes in the finals: Michelle Kaufman ran 9.50 in the prelims, and 9.53 to place 5th in the finals. Morgan Faer ran 9.83 in the prelims, and then improved to 9.71 to place 6th in the finals. In the 55 dash, Arie Sanchez led the Newton North contingent, running 8.14 to place 21st of 84 in the prelims. Latifah Smalls was 24th in 8.21, and Brianna Deanucci was 31st in 8.30.

In the 600, Kat Chiong (1:42.00) and Emma Kornetsky (1:44.47) finished 3rd and 4th, respectively, out of 76 competitors, both improving a couple of seconds from Thursday. Sally Leung (1:50.05) placed 17th, and Jaya Tripathi (1:50.94) ran a 2-second PR to place 20th. Representing the middle distances, Nora Barnicle placed 3rd in the 1000 in a season's best 3:15.04, while Franca Godenzi placed 10th in personal best 3:21.35.

A meet like Winterfest is a good chance to work on the technical aspects of the field events. In the high jump, both Sarah Berkland (5-0, 4th) and Alex Blenis (4-10, 7th) improved from Thursday. In the long jump, Arie Sanchez led North jumpers with a leap of 13-6, followed by Latifah Smalls (11-9.50) and Chantel Aaron (11-0.75). In the shot put, Tracy Isman had the highest finish of the day for North, placing second with a throw of 29-09.25, edging out teammate Morgan Faer (29-07.00, 3rd).

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On the boys side, solid performances from David Smith (50-4.50) and Marvin Chan (47-02) led to a 1-2 sweep of the shot put. Newton North also placed three other athletes in the top half of the field, as Steve Long (40-9) placed 14th, Constantine Kreatsoulas (37-7), was 31st, and Ed Metallides (37-2) was 36th out of 80 competitors.

In the 55 dash, Gordon Forbes ran 6.85 in the heats to post the 3rd fastest qualifying time, and then blasted a 6.76 in the finals to place 2nd. Hymlaire Lamisiere ran 6.97 in the heats to just miss the finals by 1/100th of a second.

In the 1M, Seb Putzys ran within two seconds of his personal best to plave 8th in 4:42.22. Teammate Alex Ribner continued his assault on the five-minute barrier, running 5:03.69. In the 2M, Alex Gurvitz recorded a 4-second improvement from Thursday to place 15th in 10:54.91.

Peter Sun placed 9th in the 1000 in 2:51.68, and Gabe Feinberg placed 35th in the 600 in 1:38.31.


Full Results of Winterfest - Large Schools