Alves Medals at All States!

We had 4 individual competitors today at the All State meet in Boston.

Kelly Alves finished 8th in the state with a throw of 34'8 inches!  Below have a picture of she and her Dad/Coach with her medal! It was her second best throw of the year. With only two other girls coming back next year ahead of her on the medal stand, Kelly is in a great position to make it to All New Englands next year when she continues her accent up the leaderboard.

Sydney Snow was up in the 1,000 meter race with what Coach Hall from Hopkinton called "a historic race".  In the seeded section, Sydney was seeded 10th coming into the race.  The race ended up with the top three girls clocking the 3rd, 4th & 5th best times in the U.S. this year!  Had she run this time (2:57.79) in the same race anytime in the last 7 years, she would have finished at worst 7th (medal) - just not today!  As we stated last week after Divisionals with Kelly being stuck in the deepest division - sometimes you get a tough draw.

Madison and Caroline were part of the High Jump.  At All States the first jump is 5', highest of any event. Caroline wasn't able to clear the height. Madison easily cleared the initial height on her first jump easily.  Unfortunately, she didn't clear 5'2".  It looks as though she placed 11th overall.

The Girls 4x400 Team of Emma Guccione, Eve Bagley, Madison Ward & Sydney Snow finished the race in 4:12.14 finished in 23rd.

PLEASE REMEMBER THE BANQUET IS WEDNESDAY NIGHT.  See previous post for details.

Banquet is Feb 24th - THIS WEDNESDAY - response requested!!

Hello Fellow Track Fans,

If you haven't please reply to Joan Mulvaney at: jjremc@comcast.net regarding the Track Banquest this Wednesday night.

We haven't heard from the majority of the team and need to get an accurate count in order to have the correct amount of food/supplies.

If you can ask your friends on the team if they have responded it would be a great help as well.

Thank you very much!

All State's Update - Snow, Both Ward's and Alves heading to All-States along with Girls 4x400 Relay

We have the offical Performance Lists for the All State Meet on Saturday at Reggie Lewis Track in Boston/Roxbury

Sydney is the 10th seed in what Milesplit MA - is calling 'the race' on the Girl's side - 1,000 meters.  Good news is she will be running with THE top girls in the state and actually two of them have times in the top 10 in the U.S.  In last year's meet she was in the 1,000, but was in the slower of the two heats.  This year she is in the fast heat, which will help her as she attempts to shave time off her PR of 2:57.35.

Madison is also listed as the 10th seed of the High Jump - not really sure exactly how they determine the seeds, but think it has to do with on which attempt (1st, 2nd or 3rd) that the athlete clears their top height.  So in essence, Madison cleared 5'2" on either her 1st or 2nd jump at Divisionals.  So anyone who cleared it on their 3rd attempt would be seeded behind her.

Congratulations to Caroline Ward in making the All State meet as a Sophomore - she is one of only 5 other underclasswomen to make this meet!!  She is currently seeded 19th after clearning 5'0" - she made the grade (or in this case - height)!

The Girls High Jump ended up with 31 competitors and however they determined who made the cut, we lost out on having Freshman phenom Becca Stevens getting a crack at All States.  Becca, don't let it get you down - you had an AWESOME season!!

Now a bit of editorial.  Madison has cleared 5'4" inches at Reggie Lewis before, that is the top height that anyone at Divisionals cleared.  She has a real shot at being one of THE top competitors here. While Caroline hasn't reached 5'4" yet in a meet, I don't think anyone affiliated with Holliston track doubts she has that in her near future. (Becca too!)

Kelly Alves is right in the thick of things with her Wildcard berth at 16th on the list of seeds going into the state meet.  If you put her top throw from the year, she would be 11th on the list!

The Girls 4x400 Relay team of Emma Guccione, Eve Bagley, Madison Ward & Sydney Snow is currently also ranked 16th out of 24 teams with a time of 4:10.17.

GOOD LUCK TO THE ALL THE GIRL'S - YOU CAN IMPROVE ON YOUR PR'S!!

Several medalists - Snow and Girls 4x4 place 2nd at D4's - in for All State - Both Ward's & Alves in as wildcards!

The Girls and Boys had competitors at Reggie Lewis in Boston yesterday competing for a spot at All States a week from today (February 20th).

The Girls finished with 29 Points - good for a 5th place team finish (and a point out of 4th).  Looking like tied for 2nd best finish in Indoor Divisionals ever - only the 2nd place finish in 2003 being better! By far the best in the past seven years.  What was awesome was we had six individual medalists and a relay - BY FAR more than anytime in the recent past.

For some context, the top 3 in each event in each Division get an automatic berth into the All State meet on Saturday (February 20th) at Reggie Lewis.  The next top 9 competitors in all the Divisions combined will also gain entry into this exclusive meet.  So the vast majority of events will have 24 competitors. The exception is in events like the High Jump where ties are difficult to cut the field to exactly 24 competitors.  Taking last year as an example, they ended up with 33 competitors due to ties in height.

On the Girls side, the 600 Meters was first to see a Holliston competitor.  In it, Emma Sayers was our first runner in the 3rd (of 6) heat.  She finished 2nd in her heat and 14th overall, not too shabby considering she was the 27th seed entering the race!  By the way her new PR is 1:45.80, and only six underclasswomen posted better times.

Next up in the 5th heat were Eve Bagley and Helen Dolan, who entered with the 9th and 13th seeds. Both easily posted PR's.  Helen with a 1:41.91 and improving her finish to 11th, just missing the top ten!  Eve saved her best for her last High School indoor meet (in an individual event - more on this later).  Coming into the race she was out of medal contention with her seed.  After leading the 5th heat for most of the first 500 meters she went to the wire with a Norton girl who just inched ahead of Eve at the tape.  But she would slip easily under the 1:42 number which had eluded her until then at 1:41.36 and most importantly a MEDAL finish in 7th place!

In the Boys 600, Ryan Sofoul was the sole entry.  After running a great race to PR in about 1:30, he was DQ'd on a technicality which no one noticed during the race.

In the Girls 1000, Alexis Mejia started off in the 1st heat and bested her time from last week at TVL's by a full 7 seconds to finish in 18th at: 3:17.33.

Sydney Snow entered as the 2nd seed behind Milton's Colette O'Leary.  At the start both competitors got off to a great start and led the pack for the entire race.  O'Leary jumping out for the first two laps. The pace was slower than Sydney wanted, so she pulled ahead for the next two laps with O'Leary right on her shoulder.  At about 750 Meters, O'Leary made her move and pulled ahead of Sydney with just over a lap to go.  At 100 meters she separated and finished ahead of Sydney by a few seconds.  While Sydney was hoping for a better time on the clock, she was happy to have qualified for the All State meet for the third year in a row!  Her 2nd place time of 2:59.51 was also her second best time ever, providing 8 points for Holliston.

In the Girls 300 Emma Guccione ended up with a time of 43.69 landing her in 13th place out of 26.

Meanwhile, over at the Shot Put, Kelly Alves medaled in 6th place with a toss of 34'3".  She has officially qualified as a "Wild card".  She currently only has two other competitors in front of her with only the D1 Divisional tomorrow.  So unless they have about 10 girls better her throw (unlikely), she will have qualified.  In every other Division so far except D4, she would have been 4th or better.  Sometimes you just end up with a tough Division!

The High Jump featuring what we could easily put up against ANY TEAM in the state, our girls were off to a good start by all clearing 4'11 without incident. This may not seem like a big deal but 1/4 of the 24 girls did not clear the initial height of 4'11".  (Note - Caroline has been battling vertigo this week and Becca had a temperature of 102 the day before the meet - so needless to say, they are a couple of ninja's getting it done out there!!)  Then all of our girls cleared 5'0"! To put this in context, there were only 6 other girls who cleared 5'0".  So Holliston's team of Madison Ward, Caroline Ward and Rebecca Stevens was 1/3 of the remaining field.  Madison sailed over 5'2" by a couple of inches to secure a 4th place finish (tied), while Caroline and Becca weren't able to clear that height. Caroline and Becca also took the medal stand.  Becca tied for 8th and Caroline solely in 6th.  WAY TO GO LADIES!

Regarding All States, if my math is right and I think it is, Madison is officially in All States!!
Also, Caroline and Becca also have a shot at getting there, the tiebreakers they do with regard to High Jump would take a degree in Advanced Trigonometry (those of you who know me realize this is not my strength...) so we will have to wait until Tuesday or Wednesday when the All State Performance lists are announced!!  16 girls jumped 5'2" or higher which isn't the 24 that they usually take. Another 22 girls including Caroline & Becca, cleared 5' - so we will see how they determine who goes.

Just after the High Jump or maybe during (it's fuzzy after 4 hours of dry air at Reggie...), the boys 4x200 relay consisting of Rick Brown, Yoel Lignabou, Jesse Zhangi and Ryan Sofoul took to the track.  They had a seed time of somewhere about 1:32 and a seed around 30th.  They were in the 1st heat, but really shouldn't have been because they had this group running for the first time all year. They won their heat by 4 seconds, which may not sound like much, but is about 40 meters!  They moved all the way up to 21st.  Who knows what they can do with a little more time together and running in a more competitive race..

The last Holliston event for the day was the Girls 4x400 relay. Holliston was in the fast heat with 5 other teams.  Emma Guccione (Gooch) started out after the first 200 in 4th place, and some in the crowd thought she may be fading at that point.  That was not even close to reality as Emma turned it on and passed everyone between the 200 to 300 meter mark to coast in to Eve with a nice lead.  Eve had another strong leg handing Madison about a 10-15 meter lead.  In most races, this would seem pretty comfortable.  The problem was we had the O'Leary sisters from Milton waiting to take the baton from there.  They had already each scored impressive wins in the 600 (Elise O'Leary) and the 1,000 (Colette O'Leary). Madison went out for the first 200 and kept the lead, then Elise O/Milton made her move and turned on the jets to create 10 meter lead for her sister Colette.  Sydney closed the gap to about 4 meters at the 300 meter mark, but Colette was saving her best for the last 100 and extended her lead back to 10 meters by the finish.  While it would have been great to catch Milton, the fact that the girls came in 2nd and qualified for States was sweet victory!  Add to that a new School record and PR of 4:10.17 for the relay team and it was just the icing on the cake!

So it's looking promising that we will have the most girls at the All State meet in a long time (I'm going out on a limb and saying probably EVER - so Coach Moreau/Levausser/Kelley - if you are reading this - let us know what you think! UPDATE - Coach Kelley was reading it and was nice enough to update us by saying that if Becca & Caroline qualify, it will be the most ever for Holliston!).  Sydney, Madison, Kelly and the 4x400 team in, and Caroline & Becca still w/a shot at it.

Good luck Saturday February 20th to those competing!

Finally, the Banquet will be at the High School Cafe on February 24th (Wednesday) at 6:00 p.m.

Girls finish strong 2nd at TVL's!

The Girl's & Boy's teams had the Tri-Valley League meet at Reggie Lewis on Saturday morning.

The Girls ended up having their best finish by far in a long time, finishing second to a powerhouse Hopkinton team that will challenge for the Division 3 title!  To put this day in perspective, consider that the Hopkinton Girls have about 20 more girls competing than the Panthers.  The Girls had 71 points compared to their best other recent finish (last year) with 50 points. The Boys finished 8th with 2 points.

Sydney Snow started things off by winning the mile with a time of 5:14.50, and scoring 10 points for the team.  She beat the closest competitor by 13 seconds with the 26th best time in the state this year and an indoor PR! Lauren Salley finished at 6:05.41 for 13th. The boys had Tim Strange in at 5:18.24 for 22nd and Cam Waddell at 5:22.24 in 25th.

Emma Guccione was next on the PR brigade with a 7.71 in the 55 dash good for 3rd place (6 points), beating the Hopkinton girl who had a faster time in the preliminary heat!
Elana Daly PR'd with a time of 8.26 which was good for 11th out of 23 competitors.
In the Boys Dash, Rick Brown was 11th in 7.07 and Louis Rossi was 29th in 7.65

In the 55 Hurdles, Freshman Rebecca Stevens was Holliston's sole entry and PR'd with a 10.84 for 18th, but her day was just starting, it would get much better... Yoel Lignabou just missed making the finals at 9.09 (7th place) and Jesse Zanghi was 16th in 10.24.

The 600 had Bellingham's Sarah Edwards post a ridiculous 1:32.86 (3rd fastest time in the country this year!!) to lead the field, w/three Holliston runners in the event.  Eve Bagley placed 5th with 1:42.67, and two more points.  Helen Dolan got a 1:44.98 for 8th and Emma Sayers a 1:46.22 for 11th out of 18 runners.  For the boys, Ryan Sofoul had a big 6 second PR to finish 10th at 1:31.24 and Andrew Milton went in at 1:35.29 for 14th and a PR.

Meanwhile in the Shot Put Kelly Alves crushed the field with an awesome 35'3.5" heave which beat her previous PR by almost 2 feet!!  It also moved her up the leaderboard in the state to 16th - HUGE! It gave the girls 10 more points. Taylor Rowles JUST missed placing with a toss of 28'3", and Jana Paecht finished 20th at 23'3.5"  For the boys, Mark Mulvaney was 8th with a throw of 38'3.5", Sam Radcliffe was 15th with 35'10.25" and a PR and Mike McKenna was 17th at 35'5.25"

Back on the track for the 300, we had another 3 competitors.  Emma Guccione placed 6th (1 point) with a 44.43.  Helen Dolan was 12th in 46.68 and Sara Winiker was 15th in 49.69.  Rick Brown scored a point in his strongest event with a 6th place finish at 38.27. Jesse Zanghi was 14th in 40.81.

In the 1,000, Sydney Snow was hoping to pull off a rare double after her mile race.  She led from the gun and was chased by Hopkinton's Izzy Giordano who had beat her once before.  Sydney was not to be denied in running a strong 3:03.14 to beat Izzy by a full 3 seconds and score another 10 points! Alexis Mejia just missed scoring, finishing 7th in 3:24.58. For the Boys, Kevin Montain had a huge 10 second PR - 2:53.68 for 7th!

The girls two mile had Addie Datz (8th) 13:03.16 and Adri Grinder (9th) 13:42.94. The Boys two mile had Liam Engle in at 11:47.19 for 13th place and what looks like another PR.

The High Jump started after the sprinting events which were done about a good hour before things started to get interesting here.  We have known for a while that our girls, Led by Madison Ward with a 5'4" PR would be among the last jumpers with a high chance of scoring some quality points.  All three of our girls, Caroline Ward & Rebecca Stevens, along with Madison we knew were capable of jumping 5'+.  We didn't know that they would finish 1-2-3 with a breakout performance by 'Becca who cleared 5' and was left alone with the Ward's and one other competitor who would soon bow out as well!  So at the very end, we had just Caroline, Becca & Madison.  Caroline while having cleared 5'1" in a previous meet, cleared 5'0" on her third attempt.  Becca had already cleared it and was already in the rarified air of the 5'+ crowd, surpassing her previous PR of 4'11"!  When they started jumping for 5'2", all three missed their initial attempt.  On Madison's second attempt she flew over the bar with ease (having a good 2 inch clearance!). Not sure if it was Becca's second or third attempt, but she also cleared 5'2" and improved her PR by 3 inches!!  Caroline just missed on all three attempts at 5'2", but Holliston's High Jumpers scored a valuable 24 points in the process!!
Madison 1st, Becca 2nd, and Caroline 3rd. To put this in perspective, Coach Levausseur mentioned that at the "relay" events where the High Jump is contested, the state record is 15' - which they easily eclipsed. (the only issue - you have to do it at that meet to qualify)
The Boys High Jump had Yoel Lignabou finish 9th at 5'6"and Ryan Sofoul at 5'4" finishing 14th.

The girls relays also finished well.  The 4x400 team was able to get a longer break due to Madison being on the team and getting held up by the High Jump victory.  So the first heat of the girls 4x400 went and then both of the Boys 4x400 teams went, giving our runners a nice additional rest for their weary legs (except Madison!).  The team of Emma Guccione, Eve Bagley, Madison Ward & Sydney Snow finished 2nd to Hopkinton in a time of 4:13.28.

The Boys 4x400 team ended up finishing 6th at 3:44.83 and another point with a sixth place finish! This also a qualifying time for Divisionals and seasonaly PR!! I am not sure of the runners here - so someone shoot me an email (stephen.snow@verizon.net) and I will update this.  Thank you.

The Girls 4x200 won their heat and finished 2nd overall to Hopkinton in a time of 1:58.49, for 8 more points. The team consisted of Helen Dolan, Elana Daly, Sara Winiker & Rebecca Stevens. (I think!) Those points brought the team to finish with a whopping total of 71 points!

UPCOMING DATES:

February 12th (Friday) 4:30 - Division 4 Meet - Reggie Lewis -  have to qualify - here is the link, see page 8 for the standards and page 9 for the schedule:                                                                         http://www.mstca.org/Winter_Season/Winter%202016/TrackIndoorFormat1516.pdf

February 20th (Saturday) 9:30 a.m. - All State Meet - Reggie Lewis

February 24th (Wednesday) 6:00 p.m. - Banquet - High School Cafe - details to come.

TVL's This Saturday/10 a.m. - Bus @ 8 a.m. and Banquet Info!

We have several athletes from the girls and boys teams competing at Reggie this Saturday (Feb 6th).
The bus "will depart" at 8 a.m. according to the coaches - so if you want to be on it, be there before 8!

Also the Track Banquet will be at the High School Cafeteria at 6 p.m. - more information will go out after TVL's to get a count for athletes and family members.  We will need to plan for the correct amount of people for food and drinks.

Good luck on Saturday!

Below are the girls athletes competing, in no particular order. I am hoping to get a list from the boys as well

                                                           
GIRLS: C. Ward, Mejia, Alves, Guccione, Paecht, Daly, Dolan, Stevens, Datz, Rowles, Winiker, Bagley, Salley, Snow, Sayers, Grinder, M. Ward

BOYS: Sofoul, Milton, McKenna, Mulvaney, Montain, Lignabou, Zanghe, Brown, Mejia, Engal, Dolan