Saturday afternoon the NYA Indoor Track and Field team competed in its last regular season competition. It seems like an eternity since we have had a chance to get in any quality training during the week but, once again, the team took advantage of a day indoors on Saturday to show that a few weeks off from training doesn’t necessarily slow you down.
The junior division girls hurdlers set the theme for the day with 2 more personal bests. Hannah Hearn lowered her school record another .25 seconds to 10.77 to just miss scoring by 1 place and Jillian Bjorn-Caron also dropped her time another .25 seconds down to 11.12.
The next big race for NYA on the track was the 55m dash where 2 more junior division girls, Jillian Bjorn-Caron & Maura Anderson, dropped their times by .2 seconds which was enough for Jillian to place in the top 10. In the senior division all of the competitors had bests (although 2 of them had never run the event before). Sarah Jordan finished in a new best time of 8.47 while Christina Reese dropped her time to under 8.7 for the first time this season running 8.68. On the boys side Jake Burns raced the 55m for the first time this season (he is normally running the hurdles) and hit a huge PR and new NYA junior division school record finishing 3rd with a time of 7.35. Aldis Gamble also dropped his time significantly (.25 seconds) to run just over 8 seconds.
Over in the shoput circle the boys had a great series of warmup throws that translated into some very solid performances. AJ Hardy consistently hit his mark – throwing within a few inches of his PR on each attempt while Cam Rayder improved by almost 2′ with a toss of 39.9″ Far enough to put him on NYA’s Top 5 All-Time list in 4th place.
Next up was the girls mile where NYA had 3 strong competitors in Sasha McLean, Hillary Detert, and Hannah Hearn. The girls ran together as a pack for the majority of the race (a new feeling for NYA) and were able to finish 2-4-5 grabbing a full one quarter of the total points scored by the team in just one event!
In the 400 Sarah Jordan continued her long standing streak of improvements and dropped her time by almost a second to 68.5 and finished 3rd while Renee Lamoreau (who has wanted to try a wide variety of events this season) gave it all she had in her first race at this distance finishing in 1:12 and placing 5th. On the boys side Alex Coffin tried his hand at the 400m for the first time this season and ran his career best time of 55.5 to qualify for the state championships in yet another event. Jacob Scammon was NYA’s sole entry in the junior division and, although we have had almost no time to practice pacing or tactics for a 400, Jacob employed some of his own to drop his time to just over 60 seconds placing 2nd.
In the 800 Hannah Twombly ran a strong race to drop her state qualifying time another second to 2:34 after a rough and tumble start. Nick Kolkin was the sole orange Jersey in a sea of blue and red but was able to work his way through the pack to better his time by 2 seconds running 2:11.6 in a exceptionally well run and intelligent race.
The 200 saw very few improvements this week but a few runners did have the energy to sort a few wrinkles in their races and drop their times. Nick Rayder dropped under 27 once again running 26.68, Jake Burns dropped over half a second off his previous best to run 25.55 which was good for 2nd place and a new position on the NYA top 5 list – 2nd. Sasha McLean grabbed 6th place in the senior division with a time of 31 seconds and Maura Anderson dropped time off yet another event running 34.72
Over in the jumps Jacob Scammon added another foot to his best in the triple jump placing 4th while Moira Lachance spent over half the meet running back and forth to the HJ yet was able to stay focused and keep it together enough to hit a huge PR of 4’6″ and tie for first place.
Next up will be the Western Maine Conference Championships this Friday the 11th at USM Gorham.