After last weekend’s MDI Relays, the high school track and field regular season is heading into the homestretch with only a week of meets left before the PVC Big and Small School championship meets at Bangor’s Cameron Stadium and Oakes Field in Dover-Foxcroft, respectively.
With so little time left to qualify athletes who are on the bubble, coaches tend to harness their energy into qualifying a few more athletes for the championship meets in this final week of regular-season action while beginning to taper their top point-scorers.
The Bangor girls have discovered recently that senior hurdler Dee Wilbur is perhaps capable of even more points, therefore increasing the Rams’ chances of a fifth consecutive conference crown.
Wilbur, one of the state’s best in the 100- and 300-meter hurdles, was inserted by coach Joe Quinn into the 800 meters for the first time in her career in a May 8 meet in Bangor, and she struck gold.
Competing against one of the state’s top distance runners in Heather Spurling of MDI, Wilbur used her speed to her advantage to post a winning time of 2 minutes, 27.36 seconds.
Brewer, which is undefeated thus far in the regular season, has a deep senior class that is motivated for one last championship run.
The Witches will be seeking a conference three-peat, as they won the Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference cross country crown and the Eastern Maine Indoor Track League championship over the course of this year in addition to a regional Class A title in cross country.
“The plan is to add another trophy and have it be the outdoor championship,” said senior sprinter Kira Giroux after the team won the MDI Relays on Saturday.
“Its not going to be easy, we’re going to have to battle in everything we do because there’s a lot of competition but I think we can do it.”
Bangor has reigned supreme over the conference for the last four seasons, and the Rams are blessed with home-track advantage for the championship meet.
“We know there’s a huge challenge out there to win this league because it’s been Bangor for [four] years, but we’ve got a great group that can challenge them,” said Brewer coach Jamerson Crowley.
While the Bangor and Brewer girls appear to be head and shoulders above the rest of their competition, the Hampden boys look strong and poised for a repeat of their EMITL championship.
The Broncos have their entire team intact after several athletes missed the first meet during April vacation week, and top guns Matt Toothaker, Jadrien Cousens, Darik Frye, Evan Piccirillo and Michael Bommarito are leading the charge.
The same can perhaps be said about Bucksport in the Class C ranks, and the Golden Bucks exhibited their competitive fire in making a bold statement in Hampden on April 25, coming one event short of winning a meet featuring the Broncos and Bangor.
The Golden Bucks are deepest in the sprints and jumps, and in a division where depth is pivotal, Bucksport goes two to three deep in the short sprints and some of the jumps.
Some of their top athletes this spring include Dom Kone, Vincent Tymoczko, Nate Warren, Colin Whalen, Jonathan Grindle and throwers Sam Sheehan, River Robertson, Zach Ivers, C.J. Breidt and Robert McGuire.
Here comes Hutchins
Danielle Hutchins may not yet be posting the speedy times we’ve been accustomed to seeing from the MDI senior over the last four years, but the best is yet to come, she said.
“Right now I’m starting to get my speed again, but its taking a long time because I have to do a lot of training,” said Hutchins, who missed a couple of early-season meets while vacationing in Costa Rica.
She admitted the time off didn’t really help.
“The first time I did the 100 I got a really bad time, then I was like, OK this is not helping, taking two weeks off was a bad idea,” Hutchins said. “I pretty much didn’t do any running, but a lot of walking and hiking.”
Hutchins knows she just has to be patient and wait for the speed workouts to pay dividends in the meets, knowing she wasn’t going to get it all back right away.
A lot of her workouts have been consisting of 300- and 400-meter intervals, which helps with Hutchins’ speed and endurance even though she also specializes in shorter races like the 100 and 200.
“Doing long stuff like that actually helps with the 400 because I’m used to running long distances,” she said. “Doing the long distances actually helps me with the short distances.”
Hutchins ran some quick splits at Saturday’s MDI Relays, which is certainly a positive sign with the title meets on the horizon.
“The training is helping and today proved it,” she said.
Snow to Queens
Katie Snow, who has consistently been one of the top runners in eastern Maine for Brewer over the last few years, will take her talents to Tobacco Road next season.
Snow, a senior distance runner who participated in four years of cross country and track for the Witches, will compete in those same sports at Division III Queens University in Charlotte, N.C., in the fall.
She has been one of the mainstays on Brewer’s 4×800 relay the last couple of years, and she also helped lead the Witches to KVAC and Eastern Maine Class A championships in cross country as a senior, and an Class A state runner-up finish.
In addition to that, she’s been on Brewer’s back-to-back EMITL championship teams.
