By: Andrew Klein

 

            As the championship track season progresses, talent becomes widespread and so does the scoring. At the FCIAC Championship level, the winning team may score above 100 points, but at the Open level, it sometimes only takes 40 to take home the title. At this year’s CIAC Class L State Championship, competition was strong, times were fast, and scoring was close. In fact, it was so close that there were two winners and two runners up.

            While the Staples Boys’ team undoubtedly started and ended the meet with a bang, the middle drifted off slightly. Staples finished fifth with 42.5 points, behind Wethersfield and Windsor tied at 64, and Fitch and Ridgefield tied at 50. They were followed closely by Lyman Hall with 42 points.

            “We should have been in the top five and we were,” said Coach Laddie Lawrence. “I had projected us for 58 points, which is a bit of a reach and would have put us in third [as runner up].”

            Staples started the meet very positively as the 4x800 meter relay team of Senior Captains Henry Kaplan, Jason Hanrahan, Dane Lonsdale, and junior Brendon Cristobal edged the competition and took the gold medal with a time of 8:11.76.

            Kaplan led off well, keeping towards the front of a classically pushy first leg. He ran even 61 second 400s and split 2:02.3 in the handoff to Hanrahan. Hanrahan kept the momentum going, but Wilton and Ridgefield runners were just as dominant. Hanrahan split 2:04.7 in the handoff to Lonsdale, who ran a strong leg, but couldn’t shake the competition.

            It was a close race, but Wilton eventually cut loose to a fifteen meter lead. Lonsdale split 2:02.6, gave the baton to Cristobal who tucked in behind Ridgefield’s Chris Wilson for a 500 meter ride. At his second go on the backstretch, Cristobal cruised past Wilson, and was on the move to catch Michael Lowrie of Wilton. He closed on Wilton, passed, and drove through the final 150 meters with Ridgefield still close, but fading. He finished, uncaught by Ridgefield, with a 2:01.1 split.

            “I was a little concerned that without Remi [Ray] and Will [Caffery] in the race we weren’t sure of the outcome but our runners are good and the fact that Jason, Dane, Brendon, and Henry won is great. It was a close race right to the end with Brendon pulling away by a considerable margin near the finish line,” said Lawrence.

            While the meet started off well, Staples’ momentum and point scoring unfortunately slowed down as the lengthy seven-hour meet drew on. Staples’ 4x100 meter relay team, seeded in the furthest lane of the fastest heat, followed the 4x8.

            With high expectations, Lawrence watched Juniors Chris Lau and Morgan Block begin the race, and Seniors Will Caffery and Colin Nangle close it from the stands. With a rough start, the team had a difficult time staying out front, especially on the second turn, when their lane eight seed didn’t help them. Nangle flew into the finish for sixth place with a time of 44.68, seven tenths of a second slower than their seed time.

            “We should have been in the top five,” said Lawrence. “We knew Wethersfield and Windsor were untouchable, but from Bunnell [third place], back to seventh place, there was only a difference of six tenths of a second. I’m disappointed they didn’t make it to the State Open, but that’s the nature of this event; everything happens so quickly.”

            Lawrence hoped to score some points in the 100 meter dash, but Nangle, Lau, and Block were unable to produce. Lawrence said that one of the reasons why the team couldn’t accumulate more points was because the team’s sprinting was off and he wasn’t sure why. Lau was the only runner of the same three Staples entrants in the 200 meter dash who scored later on in the meet; he took sixth place with a time of 23.18 and qualified for State Opens.

            There were several other sixth, seventh, and eighth place finishes for Staples as the middle and second half of the meet came. Kaplan’s double in the 1600 was a very small field of eight runners where he was seeded seventh and placed sixth for three points. Cristobal’s double in the 400 was strong, Lawrence felt he was really moving by the second half, and despite the fact that he held up his seed time nicely, he did not end up in the fastest heat, and therefore, finished sixth.

            Junior Ben Banger jumped to seventh place in the poll vault with his season’s best at 11’6”, however, he still had difficulties reaching his Indoor Track personal best of 12’0”. Caffery doubled the 800 meter to an eighth place finish in a time of 2:02.3, disappointed that he couldn’t qualify for the State Open as he did during his junior year.

            Nearing the end of the meet, Senior Captain Remi Ray made a fantastic comeback to the open 800 and the 4x400 relay team after almost a month’s hiatus due to illness and injury. He began with a hunger for speed and victory in the eight (1:57.42), and happy, but not completely satisfied with a silver medal, came back to anchor the 4x400, propelling it to victory in the event with a new school and Class L record of 3:20.93.

            “Remi got out there in the 800 and led and I didn’t want that,” said Lawrence. “It was his first big race in a month. Josh Jarvis [Bulkeley] got ahead of him and Remi tried to come up on him, but couldn’t. It was an outstanding race for someone who hasn’t been training much coming off an injury.”

            With a half hour to go before the 4x4, Lawrence needed to decide who would run since Hanrahan was sick and couldn’t. He decided to use Ray, which was a gamble, since his injury was recurring with serious sprinting.

            As Ray said, “Laddie originally told me that I would be running the second leg and that he didn’t want me going any faster than a 52. I told him that I felt up to anchoring and he switched me, but made it clear that I shouldn’t go as hard as I could.”

            With a 52, Ray, Lonsdale, Caffery, and Cristobal realized they would only be capable of a fifth place finish, as several teams in both the top two heats were capable of going sub-3:30. According to Ray, the team huddled and discussed their chances, and decided that they were all going to push their hardest and watch the outcome.

            “Right before the race, we all got unusually quiet. Typically, we’ll talk, but there was just this particular feeling between all of us and it was silent,” Remi said.

            Once on the track, everything went perfectly. Lonsdale opened one of his strongest races in 51.4 and handed off to Cristobal, who was still very close with the competition. Cristobal got to the front by the second turn, but several teams were still in the thick of things. He split 50.3, one of his fastest splits, as he passed the baton to Caffery.

            51.3 seconds later, Ray grabbed the baton and took off, but Justin Scricca of Wethersfield matched his every stride. Ray came upon the 200, seemed to get ahead of Scricca, but not enough to make any predictions of a winner. He came off of the turn, and took off even faster, leaving Wethersfield behind and eventually crossing the finish line for a one-of-a-kind 47.7 second split.

            “I’ve never really seen anyone in any race of my career close the last 50 meters of a 400 as fast as Remi did,” said Lawrence. “He wasn’t going to anchor, but he wanted to, and the rest, as they say, is history.”

 

By: Andrew Klein

 

            While some fans of the Staples Boys’ track team were convinced the Wreckers had a strong lead during last Friday’s meet against New Canaan, Fairfield Ludlowe, and St. Joes, they were misled by the team’s incredible strength on the track and lack thereof in the field. Staples’s heated competition with New Canaan ended with the second loss of its season, bringing its record to 9-2.

            The Wreckers knew that New Canaan was going to be a difficult team to beat; it showed significant strength during the indoor season, especially in the field events. Staples lacked strength in the field, but hoped it would still be able to overcome the weakness with a powerful punch in the open track events and relays.

            “New Canaan looked good during Indoor in the shotput, high jump, long jump, and pole vault and they only grew stronger in the field outdoors,” said Staples coach, Laddie Lawrence.

            In the almost-separate dual meet on the field, New Canaan nearly swept Staples in six of the seven jumps and throws. 57 of the Rams’ 85.5 points came from those events, while only six of the Wreckers’ 64.5 came from them.

            Luckily, what Staples missed in the field, New Canaan missed on the track. The Wreckers took wins from all three relays as well as every running event from 100 to 800 meters. Highlights include Senior Will Caffery’s new personal best in the 400 at 51.1, Senior Colin Nangle’s 22.7 200 meter, Junior Morgan Block’s 11.2 100 meter, and the 4x100 relay team’s best to date time of 44.2, comprised of Caffery, Nangle, Block, and Junior Chris Lau.

            Four events swung the win out of Staples’ grasp and into New Canaans’. Unfortunately, the Wrecker distance runners could not keep up with the Rams’s Jordan Lysenko in the mile and two-mile, who won by a margin of four and 27 seconds respectively. Additionally, Staples lost both hurdle events, which pushed New Canaan to the 21 point edge in the final score.

            “[New Canaan] won every single field event and even though we dominated the track, they had more first places than us and they won,” explained Lawrence. “We knew it would be close and we couldn’t split them up.

            With the end of the regular season nearing, Lawrence and the team have begun to think about the county championships. There isn’t as much worry about a weaker field for FCIACs since the scoring is different, however, according to Lawrence, “it certainly wouldn’t hurt us.”

            “FCIACs is a totally different kind of meet. All teams go against one another and it becomes harder to score points, which could help balance out our lopsidedness in the field,” he said.

            There is still one set of dual meets remaining after yesterday’s competition against Wilton, Stamford, and Harding, for which results should be available for Friday’s press time. Tuesday’s meet against Danbury and Ridgefield could prove to be the hardest of the season, and the Staples team is doing its best to improve for the end of the regular season and transition into the county and state meets.