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LEWISTON – Adam Macbeth headed into Monday’s state Class B track championships with a head full of high hopes, an eye toward a team title … and a hamstring that was barely holding together.
Over a six-hour span at Bates College’s Walter Slovenski Indoor Track, Macbeth kneaded and massaged, iced and stretched, groaned and grunted and worried.
And every now and then, the Ellsworth High School senior celebrated … just like he did at the end, after the Eagles had finally, painfully completed their undefeated season and captured their first team championship since 1989.
The Eagles accumulated 79 points – including 58 scored by Macbeth and Steve DeWitt – and topped Scarborough’s 65. Falmouth (36), Greely (32), and Gorham (26) rounded out the top five.
In the girls meet, Greely of Cumberland Center was a big pre-meet favorite. How big? Just ask Hampden Academy coach David King.
“Greely’s a strong, strong team. I think that Greely’s capable of beating the PVC all-stars,” King said.
The Rangers proved him right, scoring a whopping 164.75 points. Hampden Academy finished second with 43 while Winslow (40.75), Hermon (24) and Orono (22) rounded out the top five.
After the day he had, Macbeth may have savored the Ellsworth championship more than most.
Macbeth won the 55-meter hurdles despite clearing the final hurdle with his left hand clenched firmly against his ailing left hamstring.
“Every time I went over a hurdle it would seize on me, and it kept getting worse and worse and worse,” Macbeth said. “The last one, I just couldn’t take it any more, so I just [grabbed it] and was like, ‘OK. Hold together.”‘
Five minutes later, he moved on to the long jump, where he gingerly worked his way into the finals by getting a subpar jump into the books and then passing his next two attempts.
“When I went to do the long jump, my first jump was terrible,” Macbeth said. “That biting pain was back. That’s when I knew I was in trouble.”
But after winning the hurdles, then passing on his first jump of finals, Macbeth flew down the runway, hit the takeoff board, and made the longest jump of the day: 21 feet, 1/2 inch.
He capped his day with a second in the 200 and accounted for 28 of the Eagles’ points.
Classmate DeWitt won the mile and 800 and was second in the two mile. The 3,200-meter relay team of Lucas Sitterly, Kris Tracy, Eric Rudolph and Erik Maleck earned a victory, and the Eagles piled up 19 points with a 1-3-5-6 finish in the 800 (in order, DeWitt, Rudolph, Sitterly and Tracy) en route to the Eagles’ first title since 1989.
Scarborough had won two straight championships, nine in the last 12 years and 10 overall.
“I can’t believe it,” Ellsworth coach Jim Shedeck said. “They decided early in the season that they wanted to go undefeated. They got their undefeated season. It’s what they wanted. I’m happy for them.”
In the girls meet, Greely’s dominance was apparent from the start: The Rangers won the meet’s first event (3,200 relay) and its second (long jump). In most meets, that wouldn’t make a huge difference.
In this one, nobody could mount a challenge: After seven events, the 20 points the Rangers earned in the meet’s opening hour still would have placed them first. But they’d kept on scoring, and piled up a 78-19 lead over Hampden Academy.
Greely finished 1-2-4 in the 200, 1-2 in the mile, 1-3 in the long jump and 2-4-5 in the 800 while distancing itself from the field. Then the Rangers capped the win by going 1-2-3-4 in the two-mile.
The Rangers earned their fifth title in six years and their eighth overall.
Hermon’s Chantelle Haggerty brought the crowd to life early on, as she put her mark on the Class B record book five times in two events over a half-hour span.
She finished her day with a record in the pole vault, another in the 400 … and a grin a mile wide.
When Haggerty began her day, the state pole vault record was 10-3. When she finished, she’d tied that mark and set subsequent records of 10-6, 10-9 and 11-0. She didn’t miss a vault until 11-2, and many fans probably thought they saw her clear that height, too.
They didn’t. While the crossbar didn’t actually come tumbling down after her second vault, it wasn’t on the pins that are supposed to support it, either. Haggerty hit the bar in the middle while trying to clear it, and after the fiberglass bar flexed and recoiled, one end of it ended up perched on the top of the standard, about four inches higher than it had been.
According to the rules, the bar must start – and finish – on the pegs for a vault to count.
Haggerty wasn’t done, though. Ten minutes later she established a new 400-meter mark when she ran the distance in 1:00.80.
Haggerty said she had vaulted well in recent practices but that she had no idea why she performed as well as she did.
“I think in the pole vault, some days you have it together and some days you just don’t. Some times you try and try and you don’t improve, and all of a sudden something clicks and you just get it,” Haggerty said.
“I was lucky I guess, because it all clicked today.”
Greely received individual wins from Kate Cheney (200), Julia Chase (mile), Abby Chapman (two-mile) and Ellie Burke (long jump).
Katie Souviney of Winslow also tied a record in the 55-meter hurdles semifinals (8.45), and the Greely girls established a mark in the 3,200-meter relay, which is a new event.
MacKenzie Rawcliffe scored 26 points to lead Hampden Academy. Rawcliffe won the triple jump (35-23/4), and took second in the long jump and 55-meter hurdles. Teammate Oriana Farley also won a state title, taking the 800 in 2:20.67.
Erin Lynn of Orono went 5-0 to win the high jump.
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