Bapst girls, boys win PVC small-school titles

DOVER-FOXCROFT – To say the injury bug has hit the John Bapst track and field team would be minimizing the Crusaders’ recent misfortune.

Call it an injury epidemic, especially for the girls team.

Fortunately for John Bapst, the Crusaders had the ideal cure for the outbreak: A dual championship as both the boys and girls left Foxcroft Academy’s new athletic complex at Oakes Field with conference title hardware.

It got so bad that head coach Bruce Pratt no longer dared to say “What next?” whenever someone was laid low, especially when two key members of the girls team, Megan Sekera and Suzie Zitaner, suffered improbable ankle injuries 24 hours apart and only two days before Friday’s Penobscot Valley Conference small school championship meet.

But even with the latest maladies hobbling or sidelining one-fifth of the 20-member girls squad, the purple-and-white Crusaders still managed to easily outdistance the rest of the field at Friday’s meet for their first PVC track title in recent memory.

“We hadn’t beaten Bangor since 1989 and we did that, but we can’t remember the last time the girls won PVC’s,” said Pratt.

The Crusaders piled up 155 points to outpace runner-up Orono, which scored 90 despite having just five girls in the meet, and third-place Narraguagus of Harrington (86).

In the boys meet, John Bapst successfully defended its 2001 PVC crown with a score of 91 to top Foxcroft Academy, the last team to beat Bapst in the PVC title meet. The Ponies scored 75.5 points while third-place Narraguagus had 65.5.

For John Bapst, the week didn’t start with much promise as girls were getting injured left and right from playing everything from indoor soccer (Sekera) to … badminton?

“I was going, very fiercely, for an out-of-bounds birdie and I jumped up and fell on my ankle,” Zitaner explained sheepishly.

Despite hobbling around on crutches the last two days, the freshman who was a top seed in three events managed to compete in the discus, shot put and javelin, but not the high jump.

Zitaner typified the Crusaders’ approach to Friday’s meet as well as this season.

“I thought I was going to compete no matter what,” Zitaner said. “But I didn’t think I’d place.”

Bad ankle and all, that’s exactly what she did as she finished sixth in the javelin with a distance of 81 feet, four inches – roughly 16 feet less than her season best, which ironically was last week since she’s only been competing in the event for two weeks after finally successfully lobbying her coaches to try it in the Bangor meet.

“It was sort of a hop and then another hop, and then a throw,” Zitaner said of her revamped throwing style Friday. “But it worked I guess.”

So did the Crusaders, who had plenty of freshmen and sophomores step up to make up for their injured teammates.

“We have never won any kind of track title ever as long as I’ve been here, so this is really, really, really cool,” said senior captain Shannon Campbell. “We thought we had a strong team, but this has been surprising.”

Even Pratt was surprised.

“I was worried because Zitaner was seeded to score us 38 points and I just didn’t think we’d be able to lose that much production, but we had kids do better than expected and everyone stepped up.”

That was also the case in the boys meet as the Crusaders won only three events: the 1600-meter racewalk (Brandon Ryder), 300 hurdles (Matt Jameson) and 1600 relay (Jameson, Ian Connole, Greg Flewelling and Darian Higgins).

“Two in a row for the boys… That’s just awesome,” Pratt said with a wide smile.

Individual standouts included triple winners Maria Millard of Orono (high jump, 400 and 300 hurdles) and Bucksport’s Gunner Siverly, who won the 100, 200 and 400.

Millard was disappointed because one of her teammates was unable to compete due to a family member’s graduation. That left big gaps in Orono’s 400 and 1600 relay teams which the Red Riots were unable to fill because the remaining two, non-relay competitors were strictly field event participants.

“We probably could have easily won the 4-by-1 and scored another 20 or 25 points, so that’s too bad, but it’s also encouraging for next week [regionals],” said Millard, who will continue her track career at Cornell University next fall.

Siverly lived up to his top seeding in the speed events despite the windy conditions which have besieged athletes all spring.

“We were hoping for a win, but we have some really good seniors who had to miss this meet because our senior class trip was today,” said the Bucks’ junior. “We lost our top high jumper and hurdler and had four people out, so that’s some points we missed out on.”