It took an extra week, some umbrellas and an unexpected drive up the coast, but high school track teams finally completed their seasons Saturday at Bowdoin College.
The Class A state championship, originally scheduled to be held a week prior at Thornton Academy, was postponed after one event due to wind and rain, pushed back a week and moved north.
Bonny Eagle, coming off a Class A state championship in indoor track, finished fourth with 49 points. Westbrook was sixth with 38 and Gorham, last year’s defending champion in Class B, finished seventh with 37.
Gorham’s Josh Maxwell was the lone event winner from the three schools, clearing 6-foot-2 to win the high jump.
Two other athletes, Alex Gato of South Portland and Tommy Williams of Brunswick, also cleared the height.
“On the last attempted height, whoever has the most misses losses,” Maxwell said. “I only had one miss at 6-2, where they had two misses.”
Maxwell finished strong in other events as well, placing second in the 300-meter hurdles and fourth in the 110m hurdles.
“(Maxwell) just changed so much,” Gorham coach John Wilkinson said. “If you ask coach (Caterina) and coach Tanguay, indoor he wasn’t the same kid. He just didn’t have a real good season, and I think he got down on himself because of that.
“Then all of a sudden this spring, on the days we didn’t have practice because we were rained out, he’d find a way to get up to the USM field house. He just did it right.”
Maxwell also ran the final leg of Gorham’s 4 x 400 relay, and, with all of his success, he was thinking of a teammate when it came to the meet’s last event.
“I told them over and over again, our lead-off is a senior,” said Maxwell, referring to teammate Phil Reed. “We want to get him an award. This is his first year doing track, and he’s done amazing in the 400. Let’s do it for him”
Gorham was not seeded to place in the relay, but Reed ran a strong lead leg and let Jake Brown, Kyle Perkins and Maxwell handle to rest. The Rams placed fifth, earning a medal.
In all, Maxwell, a junior, had a hand in 25 of Gorham’s 37 points. He battled Bonny Eagle senior Greg Gadbois in both hurdling events.
“That’s such a good rivalry right there,” said Gadbois. “We both push each other.”
Gadbois finished third in the 110m hurdles, two hundredths of a second ahead of Maxwell and one spot behind teamate Ben Roy, who was runner-up.
Gadbois added another third-place finish in the 300m hurdles.
Bonny Eagle’s 4 x 100 relay team – Roy, Ernie Simard, Evan Semle and Gadbois – finished sixth. The Scots’ 4 x 400 relay – Gadbois, Roy, Evan Embrey and Eric Favreau – was also sixth.
Westbrook’s 4 x 400 relay team finished fourth, setting a school record in the process. Robbie Preston, David Quigley, Erik Born and Alex Baillargeon ran a time of 3:29.25, besting the previous mark by three-quarters of a second.
Along with the relay, Quigley finished second in the triple jump and sixth in the high jump, while Born placed fourth in the triple jump.
Westbrook’s 4 x 100 relay team took second, with Corey Luce, Born, Baillargeon and Preston recording a time of 44.84.
Baillargeon added a fourth place finish in the 400.
Bonny Eagle got eight points behind Allen Cox’s second-place finish in the 1,600m race walk, while Embrey was third in the 3,200m and Favreau took fourth in the 800m.
However, the team’s fourth place finish left coach Greg Wilkinson a bit disappointed.
“I think we underachieved,” he said. “We were seeded for 55 points, but you’d think in a state meet we’d get a few extra points here and there. You have to take your hat off to Lewiston and Edward Little. They are very, very good.”
Lewiston won the meet with 82.5 points, and Edward Little finished second with 79.
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