Waterville sweeps: Girls edge Bangor; Irvines propel boys

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BATH – As runners in the day’s final event swept past his vantage point late Saturday afternoon, Gary Capehart was left reciting the what-if creed familiar to track coaches everywhere.

“What could we have done to tweak out two or three more points?” the Bangor High coach asked softly.

His girls team would win that race, the 1,600-meter relay. But as Capehart suspected, it wouldn’t be … quite … enough.

Waterville entered the final event of the Eastern Maine Class A Championships with a six-point edge, then finished third in the relay. The six points they garnered offset the 10 the winning Bangor squad scored, and helped them post a 102-100 win over the Rams at McMann Field.

Brewer and Brunswick tied for third in the tightly bunched field with 85 points apiece while Mt. Blue of Farmington tallied 56 to take fifth.

In the boys meet, the outcome was never in much doubt: Waterville got 55 points from brothers Troy Irvine and Kyle Irvine and won the title with 115. Mount Ararat of Topsham had 87, Cony scored 63, Brunswick had 62 and Brewer tallied 59. Bangor was sixth with 46.

Capehart quickly realized that while he ran the meet back through his mind, looking for a way to “tweak” a few points in his favor, it was a fruitless proposition.

“There were four teams that we figured were pretty much vying,” Capehart said. “Now we’re at the point that the kids have done everything [they could] until the very end. They’ve all run their best. We couldn’t tweak much.”

The Waterville girls had to do some scrambling of their own. Star jumper-hurdler Nicole Nawfel did not run after competing for months with stress fractures in both legs. Nawfel said after collapsing during the Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference championships a week ago, her parents told her it was time to take a break and give her body time to heal.

Her coach, Ian Wilson, said the Purple Panthers reeled a bit, but regrouped.

“Obviously, [losing Nicole] is like a good solid kick in the gut,” Wilson said. “But what we did was we looked at it on paper … and we have some very capable girls.”

Among those: senior Carolyn Shea, who won the 1,600 and 3,200.

The 3,200 win was especially impressive, as she blew the race open with a 1-minute, 17-second first lap and topped a speedy field with a personal-best time of 11 minutes, 27.77 seconds. The 3,200 was the meet’s second-to-last event, and her finish gave Waterville the cushion it would need.

“I’ve been working with her for so long, saying, ‘Use this tactic. Use that tactic,’ ” Wilson said. “Forget it. She loves to run from the front. Take off. Run fast. And don’t look back. And that’s how she runs best.”

The UCLA-bound Shea said the tactic works pretty well.

“I knew if you go out fast, you scare the competition,” said Shea, who built a similar advantage in the 1,600 by starting the race with a 1:07 opening lap.

The Bangor girls got a four-win effort from junior Emily Capehart (long jump, triple jump, 300 hurdles, 1,600 relay) and a discus win from Ashley Chapman.

Emily Capehart was satisfied with her day’s effort, but admitted she entered the meet with high expectations.

“I was really pleased,” she said. “Everyone else [on the Bangor team] was hoping to do better [than they were seeded], but I couldn’t. I was seeded first in everything. It was more like I had to do my best.”

She did, scoring 30 individual points and teaming with Jessye Hand, Melissa Achorn and Alison Smith to win the 1,600 relay.

Brewer coach Chris Libby, who didn’t expect his team to contend for the title and was encouraged by a string of solid efforts, was impressed by Waterville’s performance.

“Ian does a great job of motivating his kids when they come here,” Libby said. “It’s definitely a business trip for those kids. When they get here it’s all about competing, and boy, it shows.”

In the boys meet, Brunswick senior Brett McIntire emerged as the individual star, but the Purple Panthers countered with a potent tandem of their own: The Irvine brothers.

McIntire won the 200, 400, long jump and triple jump, but the Irvines went 1-2 in the pole vault and 110 hurdles and accounted for 48 percent of Waterville’s points.

Troy, a senior, won the hurdles and javelin, took second in the high jump and was second in the pole vault.

His sophomore brother set a state record in the pole vault (14-6), took second in the 110 hurdles and was sixth in the high jump.

Wilson said the Irvines serve as catalysts for the Panthers.

“Troy and Kyle are those kids that really make the team better when they’re on,” Wilson said. “Troy’s always on. And when Kyle is on, we are a formidable team. Kyle was on today.”

Especially in the pole vault, where he and Troy put on a high-flying display for a sizeable crowd, with each clearing 14-0 – two inches shy of the existing record.

But Kyle almost didn’t get a chance to set his mark: He missed twice at his opening height of 11-6 before clearing it by about three feet on his third and final try.

The problem: His mark is usually near Troy’s. Troy’s is marked with a “T” made out of tape. And on Saturday, another Waterville vaulter decided to use a “T” to denote his starting position, too. … but Kyle didn’t know that.

“I went from the mark right in front of [the other “T”], which would have been mine, if it had been Troy’s,” Kyle Irvine said.

He figured out the difference just in time.

Other standouts in the meet: Mount Ararat sophomore Cally Ellis, who won the 100 and 200 and took second in the 400; Brunswick soph Danielle Zimmerman, who cleared 5-6 in the high jump; Mt. Blue’s Adam Stair, who set a new state mark in the 1,600 racewalk in 6:40.84; and Mark Swan of Mount Ararat, who won the 800 and 1,600.