Webmaster’s Ramblings
I’ve run in and attended billions of track meets, and, quite frankly, even my own personal experiences at my high school State Meets, and at college conference championships, were nothing compared with the all-day tension and excitement in Winter Park, knowing that the boys had the championship within reach. As always with the Maclay sports that I’ve been involved with, the first thing that struck me was the support system - with just 11 guys and 6 girls competing, our cheering section was at least 33 strong, plus 6 coaches!
If there was any doubt that Maclay had come to play, the girls’ 4X800 squad (Shelby, Jana, Elizabeth, Stefanie) erased that by confidently racing to the start line (one of my several highlights of the meet - check out the start of the video), and promptly running PRs each and every one on the way to obliterating the school record and posting a 9:27 for the gold medal. The boys‘ 4X8 stepped up next having run a season-best of 8:24 and being tabbed for 6th in the infamous virtual meet rankings. Scott (2:02), Hunter (2:02), Jacob (2:05) and Patrick (2:02) raced to 2nd place with an 8:11, giving notice that the boys had no intention of accepting their projected 4th place overall team finish.
Imoni (5th in triple jump), Lilly (4th in pole vault - PR of 10’6”), Lee (1st in triple jump - PR and school record 47’4”; 3rd in long jump - PR and school record 23’2”), Kyle (9th in pole vault), Matt (one tenth shy of PR from lane 8 no-man’s land in 300 hurdles) and Alden (PR 42.12 in 300 hurdles from equally as brutal lane 1) worked the field events and prelims for a few hours while we all waited for the evening finals to get rolling.
Lee started the evening session for Maclay by leading the 100 meter dash from the gun to his text-book lunge at the finish. While we’re on Lee, a while later in the evening, he returned to the starting blocks in the 200 meter dash and, after 22.32 seconds, he had a silver medal, a new PR, and another school record! And, after a couple hours of long jumping and triple jumping, prelims in the 100 and 200, and finals in the 100 and 200, he was finally finished and could sit down and watch the meet for a while - Lee’s total damage: 34 points for the team, 2 gold medals, 1 silver medal, one bronze medal, 3 PRs and 3 school records (Lee’s big day video) - oh, he missed his own school record in the 100 by 2 hundredths of a second.
While Patrick would have loved to race healthy on Friday night to make the outcomes even more intense, there is no doubt that he contributed mightily in making both the 1,600 and the 3,200 two of the most exciting races of the evening. According to my watch, which admittedly was shaking a bit from the thrill, he split 61 on the last lap of the 1,600 to stretch everyone to the limit. They had to rough him up a bit at 60 meters out to keep him in third (check out the video) - great race from a body at less than 100%. In the 3,200, PSwain settled in with the pack in a rather slow pursuit of one racer who went out strong and just tried to hang on. Patrick again led a mad dash with about 300 to go in an effort to reel in the leader, but the head and the will couldn’t quite overcome the worn out body - “settling” for 3rd at State isn’t all bad. Two 3rd place finishes, and a silver for brilliantly anchoring the 4X800!
An even more exciting event was unfolding during the 3,200 than watching Patrick’s courageous run. StevO, after a breakthrough race at Regionals a week before, was rounding into his old form and steadily picking off runners in the pack. As the bell lap approached, he had pulled himself into 7th and was running strong. Austin Stevens, nowhere to be seen on the virtual meet leader board, finished in 6th place, just a whisker off his PR, and secured 3 points for the team.
With the boys having so much fun scoring points in nine separate events, it would have been easy to overlook the girls. Easy that is, except for the fact that ALL six of them contributed points to the girls’ 4th place team finish... two spots ahead of their projected placement. Along with the 4X800 and field events efforts noted above, Jana, Stefanie, and Shelby participated in a 1,600 meter race that saw four girls go under 5 minutes. Five minutes for high school girls in “the mile” is very nearly as impressive as the four minute mile barrier for boys. Jana dipped under 5 for the second time, finishing in 3rd just one second off her PR. Stef was also one second off her PR and just 4 seconds over the 5 minute mark to take 5th, while Shelby raced to a 5:40, less than 10 seconds off her PR as well (see the video). About 45 minutes later, Stefanie laced on the spikes again to toe the line in the 800 meter run. While racing at the State Meet is pressure-filled, racing as the expected champion, with a target on your back, has been overwhelming to many athletes at all levels. Stefanie, no doubt still feeling the effort from the 1,600, cruised through the first lap right at 69 seconds in a pack of 3 girls. Over the next 100 meters, she opened a 5 meter gap... at 200 to go, the gap was 10 meters, and at 100 to go it was 15 meters. Stefanie’s closing lap of 66 secured a gold medal, and 10 points for the team.
In the girls’ 3,200 meter run, Jana Stolting and Shelby Salimone closed out their incredibly distinguished, highly decorated athletic careers at Maclay. Jana again finished a very respectable 3rd, behind two of the best female distance runners in the country. That should of course be two MORE of the best female distance runners in the country, since Jana also finds herself well respected on the national scene. Shelbers finished out of the spotlight, and could barely contain her emotions as she closed in on the finish line with the Maclay faithful chanting her name. These two very special girls will be sorely missed next year, and it has nothing (well, almost nothing) to do with the points they bring to the table.
OK, back to the boys - where were we... As I said, the boys scored in nine separate events. One of those events that pretty much nobody thought Maclay would score in was the open 800 meter run. We qualified Hunter, Jacob and Scott out of Regionals, but the 1A rankings suggested Scott’s 2:03.78 would put Maclay well out of the top 8. By way of his victory at the Region meet, Scott was placed in the fast heat, and he decided to show that he truly deserved to be there by racing to a nearly 3-second PR of 2:01.07 to snatch 5th place (and 4 points for the team) by 2 hundredths of a second.
Lets cut to the chase - after the penultimate event, the 3,200, in which Patrick and Austin pulled in 9 precious points, the team actually had sealed the deal and sat with a 17 point edge in the team competition, with only the 4X400 relay to go and a maximum of 10 points for any one team. The trophy was decided, but there still was more honor and more points to be had. Whether “Mantworth”, Scott, Hunter or Lincoln knew they were state champs or not, I’m not sure, but they certainly didn’t take the pedal off the metal in another of the events in which Maclay was not expected to score. The boys came through with their best time of the season (3:30.76) and grabbed 6th place and 3 final points for the team.
The revelry following the official announcement that the Maclay Marauders were State Champs was genuinely moving. There was no boastful strutting or cool indifference at receiving yet another honor. Although track generally is thought of as a more individual sport than cross country for example, the photos and videos of the victory celebration reveal that track and field is indeed a team sport when “played” by young men of the caliber that wore Marauder blue and white that day.
