Friday night was the last time the full NYA Indoor Track and Field team took to the track for the 16-17 season. The meet started at 4:30pm and went on for over 6 hours. Over the course of the afternoon/evening NYA’s athletes had many impressive accomplishments. Overall the boys team placed 11th, but, if you look at the full results, you will see we were just one healthy athlete, or one more good race away from a top 6 finish.
In the Jr. Boys shot put, Jack Bontatibus tossed a HUGE PR of 33′ 2.25″ to place 4th (that is a 1.5 ft PR). In the Sr. Boys division both Jack and Reece had solid days but were off of their personal bests and so just missed making finals. In other field events – Markus Russell had a 4″ PR in the long jump to just miss the 16′ mark jumping 15′ 8.75″.
In the hurdles, Jack Lent made finals with a time of 9.59 which was another .2 second drop for him and then went on to run the exact same time in finals which was good for 4th place. In the sprints, Markus qualified for finals in the Jr. boys 55m with a PR time of 7.35 but came up with a sore quadricep and had to slow down in the finals. Samson Shen also ran in the prelims and dropped his time by .04 seconds over last week. In the senior division, Reece dropped his 55m time by .01s off of a strong start. In the 200m, Samson Shen was NYA’s sole competitor and he dropped almost half a second to just miss breaking under 30 seconds for the first time. Henry Quesada pulled out a 2nd place finish in the 400m after a rough start left him in 4th place with 150m to go.
In the distances, Kieran Rowe had another stellar meet running career bests by huge amounts in both the mile and the 800m. Kieran dropped over 6 seconds in the mile to run 5:17 and almost 3 seconds in the 800 to run 2:25. Impressive breakthroughs and well earned after a season of hard work. Megan Alberding had 2 season best times in the mile and 800m as well. Megan ran almost 10 seconds faster than her last race in the mile to finish in 5:54 which qualifies her for the state championships. In the 800 she was able to cut off almost 5 seconds from her best indoor time. Xander Bartone ran his season debut in the 800m and after 3 strong and reliable laps he was able to finish the race in strong form but just missed his goal time. However, his time of 2:11.8 is a career best in the indoor 800m.
Next up for the Panthers is the Class B State Championship meet at Bates College on Saturday the 18th. The current individual qualifiers are Henry Quesada, Isabelle See, Megan Alberding, and at least 2 relays whose members will be determined on Monday.