Capehart lifts Bangor girls to EMITL championship DeWitt helps Ellsworth boys dominate boys meet

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ORONO – With Saturday night’s Eastern Maine Indoor Track League championship all of 20 minutes old, the Bangor girls found themselves in a pickle that threatened to derail their quest for a first league championship.

Star long jumper Emily Capehart, a big favorite in the event, had fouled twice. One more foul and she wouldn’t place in her best event.

One more foul, and the Rams would be in trouble. Again.

“We’ve had runners-up, runners-up, runners-up,” coach Maynard Walton said as the meet wound down, alluding to the fact that miscues had cost his teams in the past. “Today they did their jobs.”

It all started with Capehart. What she did on her third jump set the tone, avoided a huge early setback, and paved the way to a victory.

“That’s a nice short one,” a relieved Capehart said after exiting the landing pit after a leap of 16 feet, 2 inches.

Short for her, but long enough: Even though she went 16-41/2 later in the meet, that first fair jump would have been enough to win.

Bangor ended up with 109 points to Brewer’s 94 and Hampden Academy’s 64. Old Town (54) and Hermon (31) rounded out the top five in the 13-team field.

Capehart won the long jump and the triple jump, added a second in the 400, and the Rams also received wins from Kaitlin Dirrig (60) and Abby Buchanan (high jump) en route to the win.

In the boys meet, the Ellsworth Eagles did exactly what every other coach in Eastern Maine had predicted since the season began in December: They dominated, and rolled to their first EMITL championship since 1989.

The Eagles scored 114 points to Bangor’s 69 and Mount Desert Island’s 68. Brewer scored 54 and Sumner rounded out the top five with 38.

Ellsworth senior Steve DeWitt paced the effort, as he completed a difficult distance triple with victories in the mile (4 minutes, 35.37 seconds), 800 (2:02.44) and two mile (9:56.53). Classmate Adam Macbeth added wins in the 60 hurdles (8.47) and long jump (20-81/4), but scratched out of the 200 after straining a hamstring earlier in the meet.

In the girls meet, Brewer pulled out all the stops in order to generate enough points to top the Rams, but it wasn’t quite enough.

Brewer coach Dave Jeffrey put junior star Heather Clark in all three distance races, a tactic he tries to avoid unless special situations arise.

“I don’t like [to triple distance runners] for what it does to them [mentally], but she’s so fit and she was so ready, I really didn’t feel like it would be a problem for her,” Jeffrey said.

It wasn’t.

Clark was on league record pace through three-quarters of a mile in the mile before trotting home in 5:18.97. She also won the 800 in 2:24.48 and the two mile in 12:22.06.

Clark was the girls MVP, scoring a perfect 30 points, but said the two mile was a test.

“I wasn’t sure if I was gonna be able to finish, but I just held on so we could get those 30 points that we needed,” Clark said. “I’m so glad that it’s over. It’s slightly painful. And the funny thing is, I thought the two mile was gonna be easy.”

But while the Witches also won the pole vault (Danielle Lainez tied her own shared league record at 10-0) and the shot put (Rachel Dowling threw 33-4), the Rams countered with strength in the sprints and jumps.

Capehart and Lindsay Bigda went 1, 2 in the long jump and 1, 3 in the triple jump, and Dirrig and Lauren Quaglia went 1, 3 in the 60 and 3, 5 in the 200.

The 200 marked a huge swing in points, as the Witches had the No. 2 seed, and the Rams were seeded 4-5. Speedy times from the slower heats shuffled the final result, and Bangor ended up outscoring Brewer 8-0 in the event.

Walton said that event was a key, and was a place he thought Brewer could narrow the gap.

Brewer’s Jeffrey said Bangor did what it had to do to hold his team off.

“They had a great meet, and I don’t know if breaks going our way would have made any difference,” he said. “They performed very well, and certainly deserved the win.”

In the boys meet, Ellsworth coach Jim Shedeck said a two-week layoff between the last regular-season meet and Saturday’s championships affected his team, but said he made a phone call during the week that helped him prepare. … and gave him a formula for success.”I called my high school coach in [Wichita Falls], Texas, and I told him we had a huge lead on paper, and asked him how to approach that,” Shedeck said. “He said, ‘You take 35 points off that, add 10 points to all the other teams, and that’s the way to look at it.’ And he’s just about gonna be on the money.”

While DeWitt and Macbeth were the stars for Ellsworth, senior Lucas Sitterly may serve as Ellsworth’s model of versatility.

He finished fourth in the mile, fourth in the pole vault, and ran a leg on Ellsworth’s victorious two-mile relay team (with Kris Tracy, Eric Rudolph and Erik Maleck).

Sitterly said it was tough to convince Shedeck that having a distance-running pole vaulter was a good idea.

“I asked [Shedeck], and he said, ‘No. You’re a distance runner. You don’t pole vault,'” Sitterly said with a chuckle. “When he said I couldn’t, I tried it.”

Sitterly cleared 11-0 in the event.

DeWitt, who shared MVP honors with triple-winner Ben Hewlett of MDI, pointed at his team’s close-knit nature as a key to the win.”We’ve got really great athletes, but it’s just a great team,” DeWitt said. “I’ve never been with a bunch of guys who have been more excited about a team before.

“We had some unexpected adversity today, but we pulled through. I’m proud of the guys. We really wanted it.”

Hewlett was a surprise co-MVP winner, as he won the two events he was top-seeded in (pole vault, high jump), then earned a shocking triple jump win.

He entered the event as the No. 8 seed, but jumped more than a foot further than his seasonal best to take the victory.