The Scarborough girls overcame a slight deficit midway through the Class A state championship meet to claim their third straight state title at Windham High School on Saturday. The Red Storm finished the day with 72 points to edge Edward Little, which finished just two points behind with 70. Massabesic was third with 52 points.
In fourth place was Brunswick with 50 points followed by Gorham, Messalonskee, Bangor, Bonny Eagle, Cony, Thornton Academy, Cheverus, Lewiston, Mt. Ararat, Biddeford, Kennebunk, Marshwood, Deering, Brewer, Sanford, Morse, Mt. Blue, Skowhegan, Noble, South Portland, Oxford Hills and Westbrook.
“I thought 70 points would win it and we ended up having to score more than 70,” said Scarborough head coach Ron Kelly. “Edward Little stepped up too. They have a young team and they had a lot of people step up for them.”
The Red Eddies led the meet for a time before the Storm girls asserted themselves later in the afternoon. Kelly said he wasn’t concerned about the deficit.
“We had the pole vault, the discus, the 800 and then the relay still,” he said. “(Edward Little) only had three scoring events left and we had five or six. The other big key was my freshman Rachelle Greene scoring two points in the 200 when she wasn’t seeded to score. That was huge.”
Scarborough didn’t win any individual events during the meet, but had many top finishes that helped the team to the overall title. The Red Storm picked up some early points when Kelsey Schild, Abby Chick, Meghan Summerson and Whitney Chamberlain took third in the 3,200-meter relay. Annie Mills was fourth in the 100-meter hurdles to earn a few more points for Scarborough.
The team of Jenny Snyder, Emilia Scheemaker, Rachelle Greene and Annie Mills took second in the 400-meter relay, finishing second to Bonny Eagle’s Katlyn Gardiner, Morgan Costa, Peyton Dostie and Melissa Carrier.
Chamberlain came back and finished second in the 800-meter run with a time of 2:20.49. Scheemaker was third in the long jump going 16-1 1/2. She was also fifth in the triple jump. Christy Manning was third in the javelin, second in the discus and fourth in the shot put. Sarah Gordon was second in the pole vault.
“Manning was off, but came through in the shot put,” Kelly said. “She wasn’t seeded to score in the javelin but she had a personal record and scored four points there. She was seeded second in the shot, but she has not been throwing well. She was eighth going into the finals and took fourth there. In the discus, her best event, she was seeded second and finished second. A lot of my points are second, third and fourth place.”
Massabesic junior Georgia Boisse won state championships in the shot put and the discus. She was the runner up in the javelin. In the shot put, Boisse blew away her competition with a throw of 38-3. In the discus, she threw 120-8 for the win. She missed out on winning the javelin title by just under three feet. Her Massabesic teammate, Katherine Pierce, won the 3,200-meter run with a time of 11:31.88. Victoria Hewey of Sanford was second.
Gorham’s Rachel Wilkinson was the state champion in the 1,600 meters. She ran the event in 5:15.90. Pierce was second. Gorham’s Alyson Fearon was the runner up in both the 100 and 200 meters.
Thornton’s Jacky Mendes was the state title winner in the 400-meter dash ahead of Kennebunk’s Hannah Wiley and Biddeford’s Maria Curit. Mendes was third in the high jump. Curit won the long jump with a top jump of 16-8 1/4.
Going into the day’s final event, the Red Storm held a one-point edge over Edward Little. The Red Storm team of Chick, Manning, Chamberlain and Mills ran in the same heat as the Red Eddies and edged them out to win the title. For Scarborough, it is their third championship in a row and a sweep for the indoor and outdoor track teams. Kelly says the thrill of winning a title is always the same.
“It never gets old because you have a different group of kids every year,” he said. “Every team is different. We had an influx of young kids and they stepped it up. Emilia (Scheemaker) stepped up in the long jump and triple jump and then Abby Chick in the 800 and the relay. It was just a whole new group of people. We lost a lot of points last year and I told the kids that if we won it would depend on the seniors; the seniors got 10 points in the vault. Mills got four points in the hurdles and she came back and ran a solid leg in the relay. So the difference was we had to get a performance from the seniors and we did.”
Send questions/comments to the editors.
