Several Maine track and field standouts shined brightly over the weekend in high school and collegiate national championship meets, and a Washburn native earned her second consecutive national title.
Carsyn Koch, who excelled in several sports at Washburn High School before moving on to Cedarville University in Ohio, captured her second consecutive 800-meter title at the NCAA Division II championship meet in Birmingham, Alabama.
Koch, a junior at Cedarville who was a key cog in Washburn’s girls basketball dynasty earlier this decade, was timed in 2 minutes, 5.65 seconds.
Koch’s winning effort was nearly two seconds ahead of runner-up Fellan Ferguson.
Koch’s competitors took the pace out somewhat slowly, but she took charge in the second lap and pulled away for the win.
“I tucked back in the pack and that was kind of unlike me for racing,” she said in an interview posted on Cedarville’s Twitter page. “I got out of it and I just decided I would sit for the first 400 then when we reached that last 400, I was just going to go for it, and whatever my legs had left I was just going to lay it on the track.”
Koch, who has twice won the 800 indoor title and also took the outdoor championship last year, is a five-time All-American at Cedarville.
In the NCAA Division I championship meet at Texas A&M University, Lewiston native Isaiah Harris earned the redemption that he was seeking.
Harris, a sophomore at Penn State University who qualified for the NCAA championships in the 800 only to bow out in the preliminaries, earned All-America status this time around with a fourth-place finish.
Harris, who last summer participated in the 800-meter final of the U.S. Olympic Trials, finished in 1:47.94 on Saturday afternoon.
In the high school ranks, local high school athletes performed well at the New Balance Indoor National Championships at The Armory in New York City.
Among them were Mount Desert Island senior Tia Tardy, who competed in the Emerging Elite mile on Saturday and the Championship 800 meters on Sunday.
Tardy successfully defended her championship in the Emerging Elite mile, clocking in at 4:58.83.
She followed that up by posting a seasonal best of 2:14.34 in the 800 on Sunday, placing 16th out of 29 runners.
Brewer senior Austin Lufkin capped an incredible shot put campaign with one final personal best.
Lufkin threw 62 feet, 2 inches, his best output of the season, earning a seventh-place finish.
In the triple jump, Mattanawcook Academy sophomore Cayden Spencer-Thompson finished 11th overall, jumping 46-1½.
He was one of only two sophomores in the field.
Elsewhere, a trio of Hampden Academy standouts excelled in the Emerging Elite category.
Paul Casavant earned a strong 10th-place finish out of 25 athletes in the 2-mile with a time of 9:27.42.
Johann Bradley, who set a PVC-Eastern Maine Indoor Track League record in the pole vault earlier this winter, capped off an impressive winter of vaulting by clearing 13-9.75, which earned him a 26th-place finish among 45 athletes.
Shot putter Daija Misler, who will join Tardy on the Bucknell University track and field team next year, finished 17th out of 37 competitors by virtue of a throw of 38-0.75.
