In contrast to the athletes I am attempting to cover, this has to be one of the slowest blogs ever, so I'm going to try and pick up the pace.
This past weekend was the Route 228 Freshman Sophomore meet. It normally has around twenty something teams competing, however this year the meet had over thirty teams competing. My guess is that some teams traded participation in the MSTCA large school meet for the Route 228 meet due to the distance involved in getting to Dennis-Yarmouth for the MSTCA meet.
I've always like the F/S meets because they give a glimpse of the future, especially for the boys as fewer Freshman and Sophomores can make a splash at the state level at a younger age. For the girls you may catch a preview of someone ready to make an impact right away.
LS in particular, and the Dual County League in general, showed a lot of promise at this year's meet. The team was led by Clay Russell, who took second in the 800 and then joined with teammates Dan Mepham, Yaras Loban, and Anderson Koenig for second place in an exciting 4x400 relay to cap off the meet. The boys team placed second in the 4x400 without anchor Jon Westling, who kept his 52.4 PR at home with him and his extracted wisdom teeth. Koenig, just a freshman, also placed sixth in the 400.
The girl's team continues to crank out the athletes. The team finished third in the overall scoring with 30.16 points and the DCL had four of the top seven teams at the meet including the meet winner Newton South with 36 points.
The girls accomplished their high placement without Andrea Keklak, she of the 5:03 mile and 95 foot javelin throw. Its a good bet that her presence would have netted a first in either the mile or two mile, and a placement in the javelin, which would have put the team well out in front in the team competition. LS was also without indoor star Madison Acton, one of the team's best long jumpers and 200 meter runners, who I believe has opted for lacrosse in the Spring.
There was still plenty of ammunition left however. Lauren Ready in the triple jump and the 4x4 team of Georges, Rudder, Ready, and Crowe had the highest finishes of the day, each taking second place. Marika Crowe took third in the 800 with a time that might have won in most years, followed by Emily Rudder in sixth place as LS continued its tradition of strength in the middle distances. Other placements were Caleigh Georges a close fifth in the 200, where she was less than a half second out of second place, Elizabeth Houle a fourth in the discus, and Leah Potter a tie for fourth in the High Jump.
As good as the showings were for LS and the other DCL teams, perhaps the most dominant performance ever occurred at the large school F/S meet in 2006. In that meet, against athletes from 30 other teams, LS won 7 of the 17 events, six of those in meet records, and had Binder not been outleaned at the finish in the 400 by .06 seconds, they would have won 8 events and had 7 meet records. They scored an astonishing 99 points in the meet!
The meet turned out to be prescient, as the team went on to win the State Relay meet, the D1 meet, and their first ever State Championship in Track and Field. In the all-state meet, all of the points were scored by four Sophomores and a Freshman.
The 2006 MSTCA Freshman/Sophomore meet points:
200 - Dana Jamieson - 1st in a meet record
400 - Molly Binder - 2nd (by .06)
800 - Emily Mepham - 1st in a meet record
mile - Jen Gossels - 2nd
mile - Rachel Potter - 6th
two mile - Hannah Ziobrowski - 2nd
two mile - Liz Albanese - 3rd
two mile - Barbara MacNeil - 6th
100 hurdles - Sophia Romeri - 1st
long jump - Dana Jamieson - 1st in a meet record
high jump - Sophia Romeri - 1st in a meet record
4x100 - 6th
4x400 - 1st in a meet record
4x800 - 1st in a meet record
