Murphy, Owens & Podbelski Double-Medal at Freshmen-Sophomore Invitational

A short turn around from Friday's D/S meet at Reggie brought qualifying underclassmen to the Auerbach Freshmen-Sophomore Invitational on Sunday. Plenty of PRs and medals were earned as the young Lancers made the most of their experience on the state championship-caliber stage.

Lancer Medalists (minus Russell and Newell)

Boys

While the boys did not earn any medals, several came close to reaching the podium and many earned season best performances on the day. The morning was kicked off with the 55m dash as freshman Cameron Bratt (7.40) paced the way for his teammates, earning a top-20 finish in 19th place. Not too far behind him was Shawn Lestage (7.60) in 29th place and Michael Ng (7.85) in 53rd place.

The lone distance runners saw Aiden Masse and Charlie Mills take on the mile and 600m respectively. Setting out on PR pace, Masse (5:29.70) faded towards the last 600m but still managed to squeak in enough to grab a personal best by fractions of a second, finishing in 40th place. Meanwhile, Mills (1:36.84) showed his mid-season form has developed, executing a brilliantly consistent race to wind up as the highest individual finished (12th) for the boys, while shaving a second off his personal best.

In the 300m, Danny Tran (40.36) cut roughly a quarter of a second off his previous best time to finish in 17th place. He later joined Lestage, Ng and Bratt (1:46.25) on the 4x200m relay team, closing a hard second in their heat to finish 11th overall.

Mills, Masse, Dillon Gariepy, and Luke Ferreira (4:15.26) closed out the day for the boys in the 4x400m relay. Gaining championship level experience, the quartet survived their heat and finished 15th overall, capping a productive end to the day.


Girls

The Lady Lancers brought a large contingency to Reggie and got to work quick on winning medals. First up in the 55m hurdles, Caroline Turcotte (10.83) was just under her season's best, finishing in 24th place. In one of the previous heats, Shaylee Owens (10.28) found her groove from the start and grabbed a personal best along with a spot in the two section final, finishing in 10th place in the preliminaries. In the first section of the finals, Owens (10.18) cut off another tenth of a second from the preliminaries, earning her an 8th place finish in the event.

In the 55m dash, Lily Newell (8.46) and Emmalee Schepis (8.46) earned matching times from separate heats to finish 53rd and 54th respectively, while Ashten Dennett (8.53) made her way back from illness to earn a 62nd place finish in the field. While on the oval, Ashley Johnson (6:43.08) worked hard to get to a 44th finish and Ashten's sister Brooke Dennett (6:18.51) continued a consistent streak of sub-6:20s to grab 30th. But in the second fastest heat, Shea Podbelski (5:57.74) bided her time patiently to blow past the field with 350 to go to earn a 12 second personal best, and displaced several runners from the seeded section to earn a 6th place medal.

Megan Cross (1:49.62) found herself in the quick seeded section of the 600m, but found a way to bring herself back into the mix with 55m remaining.While making it close, she ended up finishing in 9th place, missing the podium by a fraction of a second. Carly Goodwin (1:56.88) continued her mid-distance development finishing in 31st place while Lauren LaFrancois (2:04.27) just missed her seed time, earning a 59th place finish. Following them, Sienna Pietrasiewicz (3:39.79) just dipped under her previous best of 3:40 to finish in 30th while Lauren Anderson (3:35.73) returned back to form in her section, finishing hard with the pack to earn a 24th place finish in the event.

The highest finish of the day came from the 300m dash. Kaitlin Russell (50.32) and Lindsey Bingel (46.74) struggled slightly in their heats, finishing off season's bests in 64th and 27th place each. But freshman Ali Murphy (42.87) took some attention from the crowd as she made the second-to-last heat a contender for the podium. Grabbing second in her heat, only one athlete beat her from the seeded heat, giving her a 3rd place medal in the event, as well as top freshman honors. Her time of 42.87 was nearly a full second faster than her previous best run on Friday and bettered her state-qualifier in the 300m.

Wrapping up the distance events, Skye Goba (13:23.01) grabbed a season's best time in the grueling seeded two mile, as she finished in 11th place. Teammate Ellison Leo found herself working through a highly competitive field but still managed to finish in a position that justified her placing in the race. Though the results mistimed and misplaced her in the results, she unofficially ran 14:15 to finish in 22nd place overall.

Fortunately for Bingel and Newell, they bounced back strong and smooth into the 4x200m relay. Joining previous medalists Murphy and Owens, the four executed flawless handoffs and Murphy helped anchor the Lancers closer to the pack in the seeded section. With only two teams displacing them from slower sections, the Lady Lancers finished in 5th place overall.

And in coming into the finale of the day with few expectations the group of Russell, Podbelski, Cross and Caitlin Whiteside (4:41.95) put together a consistent performance in the 4x400m relay. With nearly identical splits across the board, the team kept it close from the chase pack in the seeded section. When the dust settled, only two teams bested them from previous sections, allowing them to finish in 7th place, bringing home the final medals of the day.


Up Next: The Lady Lancers put their perfect record on the line, as the boys look to get into the win column, on Wednesday at Reggie against Medway. The meet will start at 7:30 pm; buses will leave NHS at 5:15 pm.