EASTON — Anna McElhinney was cold and wet from the pelting rain and raw conditions at Sunday’s Div. 3 State Relay Championships. But by meet’s end, the Billerica distance ace’s smile was big and bright.
McElhinney put together a big day on the track with mile splits of 5:12 and 5:19 in the dreary conditions to anchor the Indians to wins in both the distance medley (12:58.10) and 4xMile (21:53.52). Billerica never took its foot off the gas on the way to capturing the team title with a whopping 82 points. Masconomet was a distant second but still put up an impressive 56.13 points.
“We definitely knew we had a good chance,” said McElhinney, who finished second in the 2-mile at All-States during the winter. We have a wide variety of talent on the team. We didn’t lose anyone from indoors and we gained some athletes.”
Billerica head coach Scott Arsenault knows just how much talent he has on the roster.
“All the way around we had point scorers in the field events to running events to jumping events,” said Arsenault. “So overall it was all three areas combined. We had a few younger athletes step up which is awesome, so it was an all around great day. Coming in we knew we had a good shot and this meet is on our radar just because we wanted to follow up the indoor season. We won that this past season.”
The Stoughton boys won just one event, the shuttle hurdles in 1:06.99, but had the depth to hold off the field with 42 points. Plymouth South was second with 40 points and Milton put up 39 points for third.
Matt Singletary led all high jumpers with a leap of 6-2 in the difficult conditions. He also had the best long jump at 21-11 3/4.
“We have incredible kids in the field events, incredible sprinters and hurdlers,” said Stoughton head coach Dave Barbato. “They’re all incredibly talented. Honest to God it’s amazing that we have three guys that can long jump over 20 feet and three guys close to six feet and one way over.”
Oliver Ames had some solid performances on its’ home track as the foursome of Grace Okocha, Julia MacLaine, Jenna Gilman and Katie Sobieraj won the sprint medley and broke the school record with a time of 4:15.02. Ryan Sarney had a scalding mile split of 4:15 as the Tigers’ lineup of Alex Pierce, Aidan Dupill and Brendan Thomas broke their own meet record time in the 4xMile with a time of 18:00.43.
“It was a team similar to the team we had last year. They set their sights on the meet record they had,” said Oliver Ames head coach Kyle Sousa.