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ORONO – The expectations couldn’t have been any higher for the Brewer girls indoor track and field team this winter.
The mission before this season even started was simple and set in stone: Win the Eastern Maine Indoor Track League championship.
The Witches accomplished their mission Saturday, as MacKenzie DeGraff won three individual events, Kira Giroux took two and Michelle Haluska picked up two key second-place finishes as Brewer outdistanced Bangor 137 1/3 points to 105 at the University of Maine field house.
Old Town was third out of nine scoring teams with 53 points, while John Bapst of Bangor took fourth (37 1/3) and Hampden Academy fifth (36 1/3).
DeGraff, who won the 55-meter dash, long jump and triple jump, shared the meet’s Outstanding Performer award with Old Town distance ace Hilary Maxim, who won the mile, 800 and 2-mile.
Maxim was gunning for Heather Clark’s league record in the mile, but fell just short, finishing in 5 minutes, 7.08 seconds. The record is 5:04.66.
“It was hard to push by myself. I really did want the record, but I was really happy with it,” Maxim said.
Maxim earned a personal-best in the 800, clocking a 2:22.7, while cruising to an 11:26.24, that she didn’t think she had in her, in the 2-mile.
“I was really surprised at how well I ran that because I was just kind of running it,” Maxim said. “[My legs were] really tired after the mile and 800.”
Brewer did what it expected to do in the team competition, winning its first league championship since 2003, but the four-time defending champion Rams didn’t give up their throne without a fight.
After Bangor picked up 21 points in the triple jump and shot put to draw within 93 1/3 to 93, Brewer’s runners in the 200 decided to do something about that.
Brewer junior Giroux pulled away from Bangor’s Brittney Chapman to win the 200 in 27.31 seconds, while senior Sarah Risser took third and Erika Cote fourth, giving the Witches 20 points and comfort going into the 2-mile.
“They’ve been doing that all year. That was big, it’s a big event for us,” Brewer coach Jamerson Crowley said of the 200.
In the 2-mile, Haluska and Katie Snow finished 2-3, good for 14 points and sealing Brewer’s championship.
Knowing they were seeded well in the late events, the Witches did not panic when the Rams made up the ground in the meet’s middle portion.
“We just took it one event at a time,” said Risser, who added a third-place finish in the 55.
“We knew we could do it, the points in the middle of the meet didn’t matter, it was just the end totals that we were focused on,” added Risser.
The Witches added some icing to their cake by breaking their own EMITL record in the 4×220-relay again, as Risser, Giroux, Cote and Colleen Carr blazed to a 1:51.05.
“It felt good to beat our own record and we hope we can keep improving,” Risser said.
Bangor’s effort was valiant – Kendra Lenz picked up second-place efforts in the 55 and long jump and a third in the triple jump while Dee Wilbur captured the hurdles in 9.03 – but it wasn’t enough to overcome Brewer’s depth.
“That’s a very, very good team we were running against,” said Rams coach Maynard Walton. “They have depth, they’re good, you’ve got to give them credit.”
Giroux, whose winning 200 time was a personal best, posted yet another in the 400, pulling away from Old Town’s Lauren Keane to win in 1:01.11 and certainly improving positioning for the Feb. 18 state championships.
Giroux had to dig deep for some extra energy to outkick the Coyotes’ senior.
“It was hard. I felt like I was going really slow, and I kept pushing myself because I really wanted it,” Giroux said.
DeGraff certainly did her part, surging past Lenz to win the 55 in 7.87 after winning the long jump (16-01/2) and rallying to win the triple jump (34-2).
DeGraff didn’t get the mark until her last jump, after Hampden’s Ashley Gott popped a 33-4 and Lenz a 33-01/2 to move ahead of the Brewer junior.
“I was really nervous because both Ashley and Kendra jumped their best jumps, and I was like, I have to do it,” DeGraff said.
DeGraff executed the final jump, hitting a perfect mark and executing her phases soundly.
“At the beginning they weren’t going very well, my knee was sticking out, but the last one felt very good,” she said.
Brewer’s 4×880 team of Kaitlin Noyes, Brooke Madden, Ashley Geiser and Haluska posted a 10:17.33 to win that event while Snow was third in the mile and Haluska second in the 800.
Other individual champions were John Bapst’s Danielle LeClair, who won the shot put with a heave of 33-9, MDI’s Mariah Grover, who cleared 5 feet to win the high jump, and Orono’s Ariel Meaker, who took the pole vault at 8-6.
Crowley was voted by his peers as Coach of the Year.
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