OLD TOWN, Maine — Zach Beaton was excited about taking on the league’s top competitors during Saturday’s Penobscot Valley Conference Large School Track and Field Championship at Old Town High School.
That helped bring out the best in the Hermon High School senior. Beaton won four events on his way to the Most Outstanding Performer honor, and Bangor High School took home the team title.
Bangor tallied 161 points to easily outdistance runner-up Hampden Academy’s 93 points. Old Town was third with 68 points followed by Presque Isle (66), Brewer (63.5), Hermon (53), Mount Desert Island of Bar Harbor (50), Ellsworth (20), John Bapst of Bangor (8.5) and Foxcroft Academy of Dover-Foxcroft (6).
Beaton, who will take his talents to the University of Maine in Orono this fall, won the 110 hurdles (14.72 seconds), the 300 hurdles (40.87), the long jump (21 feet, 2 1/4 inches) and the triple jump (40-5 1/2).
“The 110 hurdles was the highlight of the meet for me because I broke the PVC record which was also held by me,” Beaton said, referring to his previous best of 14.87. “I was pretty happy with that.”
Beaton said he wasn’t surprised to win all four events.
“The competition at this meet definitely pushes me more than other meets throughout the season because the competition at those meets can be higher in certain events and lower in other ones. But at meets like today, the competition is high all the way around,” he said.
Hampden Academy senior Wyatt Lord was a double winner as he claimed the 1,600 in a personal best (4:28.12) and the 800 (2:01.13). He was also third in the 3,200.
“I love the heat,” said Lord, who will run next season for Husson University in Bangor. “Distance runners’ muscles are naturally tight and when it’s cold, they’re super tight.”
The Bangor boys won the first event, the 4×800 relay, with the recently assembled team of Gordon Doore, Dwight Knightly, Daniel McCarthy and James Fahey. They posted a time of 8:28 and the Rams never looked back.
“That set the tone,” Bangor coach Alan Mosca said. “It’s like the first five minutes of a football game.”
Mosca said both his boys and girls did a great job.
“The big thing we talked about was holding our seeds. And then we knew we would have many opportunities to move up and both teams did that,” said Mosca, who also praised assistants Shannan Fotter, Roger Huber, Garrett Johnson and Dana Seekins for their contributions.
“I was happy with the team’s performance,” said senior sprinter and captain Landyn Francis, who won the 100 in 11:43. “We did what we came here to do. Coach [Mosca] has been telling us all year just to do our jobs and we did. We stayed as a team, made sure we cheered each other on and we worked [hard] every day in practice.”
The other individual winners were Bangor’s Andrew Munroe in the 200 (23:30), Peter Blackwell in the pole vault (12-6), Maxx Smith in the javelin (138-10) and Knightly in the 3,200 (10:16.17). Other event champions were Old Town’s Nathan Reagan in the high jump (5-8) and David Roderick in the 1,600 race walk (8:37.03), MDI’s Gilbert Isaacs in the shot put (52-1 3/4), Brewer’s David McCluskey in the discus (154-6), and Presque Isle’s Trace Cyr in the 400 (51.76).
Cyr accomplished a long-term goal of breaking the school record. Knightly, who will attend Stanford University, set a personal best in the 3,200.
Old Town’s team of Nick Letourneau, Zacharia Fostun, Elijah Veilleux and Wayne Dorr won the 4×100 relay in 45.21, and the Coyotes also captured the 4×400 as Dorr, Fostun, Letourneau and Dante Crenshaw crossed the finish line in 3:37.20.
Hampden Academy’s Kash and Hermon’s Dave King were selected as the top boys coaches.
Next Saturday’s state meets will be held in Lewiston (Class A), Brewer (Class B) and Farmington (Class C).