December 15th 2012 – Bowdoin College
The North Yarmouth Academy Indoor Track and Field Team kicked off its season with a relay carnival hosted by Bowdoin College. The boys and girls teams competed in a 12 team meet against Class A and B schools. The boys team had only 7 team members on Saturday yet was still able to place 11th, just one point out of 9th while the girls team finished 7th. All of the events contested were relays but some had individual components. The field events and the mile had each competitor throwing, jumping, or running as an individual and then the performances were added up to create the relay team’s performance.
Matt Benoit ’13 threw the shot for the first as an NYA Panther and finished solidly in the middle of the pack with an obvious potential for improvement. Jake Burns ’13 kept very busy on Saturday with a variety of events ranging from the jumps to the hurdles to middle distance. Most notable was his leg on the 4x400m relay which finished 5th and earned a spot on the NYA top 5 all-time list as the 4th fastest ever at NYA. Dean Walters ’13, Ben Claytor ’13, and John LeBlanc ’15 all had strong efforts in a difficult heat. Dean also ran a very quick 300m leg in the Coed relay, which earned that team a 5th place finish as well. 
Ben Claytor came back from 2 weeks of rest to help out both boys sprint relays even though jumping was not an option this week. Abrahim Al Musawi ’15 also had his debut as an NYA Panther on Saturday and his efforts in the Long Jump Pit and in the 4x200m relay added some valuable experience to his already quickly improving abilities. John LeBlanc ran an open mile as part of an incomplete 3×1 mile relay in a time of 5:10.97. That time was already faster than his best time from last year and almost as fast as his personal record from the end of last spring.
The girls squad had significantly more athletes on Saturday but was still missing a good number due to scheduling issues. The girls had a throwers relay for the first time in team history which makes them the new school record holders! 
Muriel Adams, Ellis Miskell, Abby McKelvy, and Shelby Peavey placed 3rd in the event (just .05 seconds out of 2nd) after a strong effort and solid hand-offs. Along the same lines the girls team had its first ever 4x55m shuttle hurdle relay which also means a new school record was set by Jililan Bjorn-Caron, Nyajal Ngoal, Maura Anderson, and Meaghan O’Leary. They placed 5th in the competition. Of those 4 girls Nyajal and Meaghan had never competed in a hurdle race until Saturday! In the jumps many athletes tried the long, triple, and high jump for the first time with great results. All athletes got the experience needed to move forward quickly with training and are looking forward to the next competition. In fact – all 3 relays scored for NYA with the long jump 5th, the high jump 5th and the triple jump 6th. In the throws 5 girls had great days in the circle. Of those 5 only 2 had ever thrown before. Muriel had a great day throwing within 2′ of her career best while Ellis had her 2nd best throw of all time just 7 inches below her record. 
Nyajal, Shelby, and Abby all had banner days and set strong starting points while getting some much needed competition experience to build on. Another exciting event on the day was the girls 4×400. This relay was made up entirely of freshmen who were admittedly extremely nervous. Yet when the race started you would never have known it. The Claire Maurer, Linnea Hull, Acacia Bright, and Emily Taylor came together for a great first race at that distance AND a 5th place finish 
after winning their heat by a large margin. Last but not least was Hannah Austin. Hannah had to wait until the very last race of the night to compete but it didn’t seem to change her performance. Hannah raced in the fast heat of the 1 mile run and finished 7th against some strong competition. She beat her career best time by over 20 seconds from last year when she finished the race in 5:57.90. That time also makes her the first member of the NYA squad to qualify to compete at the state championships in that event.
All in all it was a great day (although a long one!) for NYA. Now that we have one competition out of the way we can start to focus a bit more in practice and prepare for our next outing on the 29th of December at the New Years Relays at the University of Southern Maine. This will be our last invitational relay carnival before the regular season kicks off on January 4th.
Great day NYA T&F!