Bay State Meet Results - 2/1/07

For a few tense minutes, it looked like it was Milton's day. In the first event of the night, Stephen Connors had won the mile for the Wildcats, and it was not yet clear whether North's gamble of putting distance ace Seb Putzys in the 1000 (and Peter Sun in the 600) would pay off. Meanwhile, in the high jump, Milton's Marcus Kohlman and Eric Wornum were both over at 5-7, and David Smith and Sam Arsenault had missed twice. Then in a space of ten minutes, the tide turned in favor of Newton North. Putzys (2:42.21) sprinted to a paper-thin victory in the 1000 over Milton's Kevin Manning (2:42.33), and Matt Gornstein (2:52.49) ran a PR to nab 3rd. Arsenault cleared 5-7 on his third attempt, and went on to clear 5-9. In an unexpected bonus, David Smith cleared a personal best 5-7, and the Tigers were in business.

Smith led an expected sweep in the shot put, Alex Lee and Peter Sun went 1-2 in the 600, Avery Mitchell finished 2nd in the 300 (after having been sick all week), Ryan McCarthy held on to second in the 55 hurdles, Hymlaire Lamisere and Gordon Forbes placed 2nd and 3rd in the 55 dash behind Wornum, and the Tigers needed only 3 points in the 2-Mile to secure the victory in advance of the relay. They got 4 points, as Alex Gurvitz and Ben Chebot finished second and third, to run the score to 45-36. For good measure, the Newton North quartet of Lee, Adam Bao, Abasu Watanabe, and Mitchell won the 4x400 relay and put an exclamation point on the Tiger's latest undefeated season.

The girls meet was expected to be equally tense, especially since the Newton North team was missing several runners, including Michelle Kaufman (in France this week). But Wellesley was also short-handed, with some athletes out with injury and others resting for this weekend's State Coaches meet. As a result, the expected barn-burner was over early with Newton winning every event on the oval and prevailing rather easily.

In the first event, which figured to be a toss-up, Jess Barton (5:22.56) led North to a sweep of the top four places against the Raiders. In the 1000, Carolyn Ranti ran a 5-second PR of 3:03.92 (second-fastest time in the state so far) to win the race against Wellesley's Sarah O'Brien and Anna Stoebel. Marlis Gnirke did not compete. In the 600, Kat Chiong and Emma Kornetsky went 1-2, and Lily Brown won the 300. In the 2-mile, Franca Godenzi ran a PR 12:19 to win, and Arie Sanchez won the 55 dash. In the field events, Tracy Isman and Morgan Faer went 1-2 in the shot put, and Sarah Berkland took 3rd in the HJ. In the long jump, which isn't scored for dual meets, Laryssa Manigat and Arie Sanchez finished 2nd and 3rd at 15-2 and 15-0, respectively.

North won the relay easily, and the meet 57-29.

There were a number of other close meets. For the boys, Braintree won a close meet over Natick, 44-42, and Weymouth prevailed over Walpole 44-42, despite both Carey teams losing the final relay. In the Needham-Norwood meet, the two teams were tied going into the relay. Unfortunately for Needham, they finished two seconds behind and fell to their Herget foes 40-45.

For the girls, the divisional situation was reversed as Newton North was the only Carey division team to win the inter-divisional meet. Weymouth-Natick was the closest meet of the day, but even winning the relay wasn't quite enough for Weymouth to catch up as they fell 42-44. Natick's distance runners performed extremely well and helped neutralized Weymouth's strength in the long events, as they got wins from Rebecca White (5:24 mile), Anya Price (11:29 2M), and a 2nd-pace from Marielle Brown (3:11 1000).

Link to Bay State Inter-Division Meet Results