Mainers shine at New England track meet Giddings, Moody-Roberts win

SACO – As hot as it was on the track Saturday, the blazing-fast times South Portland’s Eric Giddings and Elise Moody-Roberts of Cape Elizabeth put up raised the temperatures to a boiling point.

Moody-Roberts, a sophomore and Giddings, a senior, were victorious in their races at the New England Track and Field championships at Dr. Paul S. Hill Jr. Stadium at Thornton Academy.

Temperatures throughout the day hovered in the low to mid-90s while the temperature on the track surface neared 100.

Giddings, who will run for one of the nation’s top programs at Stanford University next fall, locked horns in the 3,200 with Portland freshman Sintayehu Taye, who beat Giddings in last week’s 1,600 at the state meet and set a state record.

This time, Giddings would take a major risk: going out hard. If he wasn’t strong enough, the intense heat on the track would overtake him.

Not on this day.

Giddings led from start to finish, shattering the New England record with a time of 9 minutes flat. Taye was second in 9:01.68.

“Obviously he has the better kick so I needed a pretty good lead,” said Giddings, who stretched his lead to as far as 30 meters in the final 600 yards before Taye made a last-ditch push in the last 200. “He came back on me the last lap, which was expected.”

Giddings and Taye are different types of runners: Giddings is stronger while Taye is the patient sitter-and-kicker. On Saturday, the strong start paid off for the South Portland star.

“You can always tell if you went out too hard and not felt great,” Giddings said. “The second 200 [of the first 400] I brought it back to a realistic pace.”

Giddings went through the first 400 in 65 seconds (1:05).

Elsewhere in the boys meet, Sintayheu’s brother Ayalew, a junior, and Bangor sophomore Casey Quaglia turned in strong efforts in the 1,600. Taye held off Zac Hine of South Hadley, Mass., and John Schroeder of Nashua North (N.H.) to win in 4:13.55, just three seconds off the record of 4:10.31. Quaglia finished 11th overall and won his heat, holding off Derek Dutille of Lebanon (N.H.) High in the final 100 yards. Quaglia finished in 4:24.63, which he said was a Bangor school record.

Other Mainers with strong showings were Kevin Floster from Lake Region of Naples, fourth in the 800 (1:56.14), and Old Town senior Tyler Eastman, 15th out of 31 competitors in the shot put with a heave of 49 feet, 11/2 inches. Hampden Academy’s Ben Toothaker placed ninth in the triple jump with a leap of 43-1. Andrew Marston from Greater Portland Christian was fourth in the 400 (49.53).

In the girls meet, Moody-Roberts used a different tactic then Giddings did in the 3,200: going with the pack, and waiting for just the right moment to surge.

That right moment occurred just before the halfway point, when the Capers’ sophomore emerged from a pack of 13 other runners, ran splits of 1:16 and 1:11 and won by a 3-second cushion over Leah Rosenfeld of Richfield, Conn. Moody-Roberts’ time was 5:04.45.

Moody-Roberts acknowledged that the pace was too slow for her liking, and she did something about that.

“I tried to stay behind the leaders, but the pace was too slow so I decided to take the risk, and I’m glad I did,” she said.

Moody-Roberts, who was running her last race in Maine (she’s headed to Burke Mountain Academy in Burke, Vt., next year) was pleased with the way it turned out.

“I’m glad my last race running for Cape was a good one,” she said.

Katie Andrle of John Bapst of Bangor also was running her last races, of her high school career that is. Her best showing was in the 300 hurdles, where she ran a time of 45.83 seconds.

Andrle and senior teammates Courtney Martin, Evelyn Sharkey, Nicole Lavertu and Elaine Colwell were all competing together one last time.

“This is our last meet all together, so it’s fun,” said the UMaine-bound Andrle. “It’s not just the meet, tomorrow we’re going to go to the beach or something.”

Andrle was a tad disappointed with her 300 hurdles time but was pleased with her efforts.

“I tried my best and that’s all you can ask for really,” she said.

Other Maine standouts included Freeport’s Logan Crane, who was fifth in the 100 with a mark of 12.66 seconds. Bangor freshman Allie Clukey was 15th in the 200 (27.23) while teammate Jolene Belanger earned 17th in the 300 hurdles (47.90).

Mount Ararat of Topsham’s Jessie Wilcox ran to a sixth-place finish in the 400 (58.18) while MA’s 4×800 team finished second in 9:17.62, just four seconds behind the winning team from Ridgefield, Conn., which set a Connecticut school record (9:13.10).

Cony of Augusta freshman Bethany Dumas finished in a tie for second in the pole vault with Nelly Denehy of Frontier, Mass., each clearing 10-6, while Belfast’s Bryna Harrington tied for fourth with Brookfield, Conn.’s Dara Samuel with a vault of 10-0.