By Sotirios Pintzopoulos
The NRHS girls track team after winning the Division 4 state championship this weekend. (John Friberg photo)
Published in the June 1, 2017 edition
NORTH READING – The girl’s track and field team accomplished the ultimate goal by winning the Division 4 State Championship. After winning the state title last year the Hornets had winning a Back to Back title as their ultimate goal for the season and that is exactly what they accomplished on Sunday May 28th at Norwell High School. The victory was the 4th state championship in program history and the 3rd in 4 years. To win the meet the team had to place athletes in the top 8 in 19 contested events on both the track and field. The top eight athletes in each event would score points as follows (1st=10, 2nd=8, 3rd=6, 4th=5, 5th=4, 6th=3, 7th=2, 8th=1). This year’s victory was sweater than the last 3 as the team only one by 1 point, just nearly edging out Amesbury 96 points to 95 points. The next closest team was Martha’s Vineyard with 60 points.
Starting off the meet was the Pentathlon event, which was contested a few days earlier on Thursday. In the event athletes compete in the 100 meter hurdles, long jump, high jump, shot put, and 800 meters although within a three hour time period. Ali Grasso led teammates Victoria Grasso and Lauren Gulbicki to a 3-6-7 finish in the event. Scoring 2442, 1976 and 1943 points respectively. Ali Grasso’s time of 15.99 seconds in the 100 meter hurdles set a new meet record in the event that was previously held by NRHS 2016 graduate Jenna Raffael who set the record of 16.39 in 2015.
The meet continued a few days later on Sunday. The Hornets were the first to arrive, pulling into Norwell 90 minutes before the start of the meet, which was at 9:00am. As Coach Pintzopoulos said “if our team is the first to arrive and the last to leave we know we had a good day.” The meet began with the field events (shot put, javelin throw, discus throw, long jump, high jump, pole vault and triple jump). Captain Nicole Shedd competed in the Discus, while Kerry O’Brien and Riley Brunner contested the High Jump. The Hornets had no athletes in the shot put or javelin throw but they stepped it up in the other three field events. Leading the charge in the Long Jump was Juliette Nadeau (17’ 3”) who tied for second place. Megan Lawlor (15’ 9.75”), Victoria Grasso (15’ 7.5”) and Kaitlyn Shevlin (15’ 7”) also jumped well but failed to make the finals. Juliette came back strong in the triple jump leading the way with a first place performance of 37’ 1”. Megan Lawlor (34’ 10.5”) and Kaitlyn Shevlin (33’ 11”) picked up valuable 4th and 6th place spots. Wrapping up the field events was the Hornets marque event, the pole vault were they had 6 of the 12 girls in the event that cleared the opening height of 7’ 0”. Emily Roesch (7’) and Sophia Casciano (7’ 6”) just missed scoring points, while Emily Davis (7’ 6”) and Victoria Grasso (8’) picked up 8th and 7th place. Freshman Isabella Parrett had a huge personal best performance improving upon her previous best of 8’ finishing tied for 2nd with a vault of 9’ 0”. Rachel Hill vaulted 9’ 6” and called it a day for 1st place as she is still recovering from an injury and is resting up for next week’s All State Championship. Rachel is now the 5th Hornet State Champion in the event and her win was the 8th Hornet victory in the event in the last 9 years.
At the conclusion of the pentathlon and field events the Hornets had 46 points, 13 points ahead of Amesbury. The cushion was necessary as Amesbury had strength on the track across all the events. The Hornets did not have an athlete in the 100 meters or 200 meters as well as the 800 meters, despite having 4 athletes who qualified to compete in the event (more to come on this later). But with Meredith Griffin’s 4th place finish in the One Mile Run (5:21.17), Lindsay MacLellan’s 8th place finish in the Two Mie Run (12:10.09), and Kirsten Bradley’s 3rd place finish in the 400 Meter Dash (60.10) the Hornets kept their lead over Amesbury. Ali Grasso ran 68.52 in the 400 Meter Hurdles to pick up 6th place and came back later in the meet to pick up 3rd in the 100 Meter Hurdles (16.10) while Maggie McCarthry finished right behind her for 4th place in 16.26. Julia Tatone (Two Mile), Sam Martel (One Mile) and Lindsay MacLellan (One Mile) also competed on the track. Leading into the final three events (the relays) the Hornets were up on Amesbury 80 to 72.
Up first was the 4 x 800 meter relay. Coach Pintzopoulos knew the meet would be close so he made sure he kept all four athletes at their best leading into the event. Three of the four runners had not run yet that day and Meredith Griffin had had nearly two hours to recover from her race in the One Mile Run. Leading things off was Grace Hadley (2:25) who put her team into the second position behind a strong Old Rochester team. Olivia Esposito (2:25) took over and passed the baton to Claire Finnegan (2:32) who kept the team in close contact. Meredith Griffin (2:26) took the baton 10 meters behind the ORR team and saved her move for the final 50 meters besting her opponent and taking 1st place for the Hornets in 9:48.49. The time was a 25 second improvement on the team’s season best and was within 4 seconds of the school record and 9 seconds off the state record. The victory put the Hornets 15 points ahead of Amesbury (90 to 75) who finished 6th in the event. But the strong Amesbury 4×100 took 10 points and the Hornet 4×100 of Rachel Hill, Juliette Nadeau, Kaitlyn Shevlin and Sophia Casciano (52.06) despite running a season best time had to settle for 10th place and no points. This brought the Hornet lead over Amesbury down to 5 points.
Amesbury were the favorites in the 4×400 meter relay and the Hornets were seeded 7th but they knew if Amesbury won the event they would need 4th place to tie them and 3rd place to win. Kirsten Bradley led things off with a 62 second split and handed the baton off to Emily Davis, who got the baton in second place but sprinted around the first turn into 1st place at the cut in on the back stretch, she continued to pull away from her competition and raced a 62 second split. Mia DeNofrio ran a solid 64 second third leg getting passed by Amesbury but keeping the Hornets close. Meredith Griffin received the baton in 2nd place but fell back to 5th place in the first 100 meters. Despite the setback, her teammates and her coaches knew Meredith would give it her all to get back to the front in the last 100 meters that is exactly what she did, sprinting her way past 2 athletes and into 3rd place with a 63 second split finishing in 4:11.62, a 6 second improvement from the team’s season best and the 3rd fastest time in school history.
The crowd roared as Meredith came back in the last 100 meters, despite falling back on the back stretch. It was a fitting ending to the meet which started at 9:00am and ended at 3:00pm. The spectators remained to the finish to witness the amazing head to head competition between Amesbury and North Reading. Both teams had a rivalry going all season as the Hornets beat Amesbury in the regular season to upset their undefeated streak and both teams finished 7-1 and had to settle for a co-championship. The Hornets also bested Amesbury at the D4 State Relays but were handily defeated by both Amesbury and Pentucket at the Cape Ann League Championships a week before the state meet. The loss left the Hornets bitter and amped to claim the top spot as Back to Back State Champions a feat matched in school history only by the 1969/1970 baseball teams.
