Bo Dunn (left) and Emily Jones in their winning relay race. (Photo by Lexie Daniells)
The Bromfield girls indoor track team brought home its first Massachusetts State Track Coaches Association Class D Relay meet victory at the Reggie Lewis Center in Roxbury last Saturday. After taking second last year, the Trojan women scored 49 points to run away with a 19-point win over Hamilton-Wenham and North Reading, who tied for second with 30 points.
Coach Henry Phelan took advantage of the team’s depth by entering two teams in five of the 10 relay events. Bromfield scored points in every event on the track and took fifth place in the long-jump relay.
Bromfield distance runners kicked off the day in the 4 x 800-meter relay, entering two evenly matched teams in the event. Maddie Darden, Liz Lee, Kat Long, and Bo Dunn made up one team, while Lisa Reedich, Jennie Ives, Mimi Narbonne, and Emily Jones ran for Bromfield’s second 4 x 800 relay team. Jones and Dunn came in together to wrap up a first and second place finish for Bromfield, clocking times of 9:48.24 and 9:50.44, respectively.
All eight runners in the event ran splits nearing 2:30 or faster, an achievement that Lee, a senior captain on the team, believes is significant.
“I think that it is really exciting to have eight people who can break 2:30 for the 4 x 800,” said Lee. “It looks like the end of the season is promising.”
The day was far from over for the Bromfield 4 x 800 competitors who, three hours later, were back on the track for the distance medley relay event. Dunn and Reedich stepped up to the starting line first for the 1,200-meter leg of the relay, a distance that was new to both Bromfield runners. After securing strong positions for their teams, Dunn handed the baton off to Long, and Reedich passed off to sophomore Nikki Snyder for the 400-meter relay leg.
Freshmen Sydney Durand and Darden ran next in the 800-meter leg. Jones then took the baton from Durand, and Lee stepped up for Darden to anchor the two Bromfield relays with a 1,600-meter leg. Dunn, Long, Durand, and Jones came in first with a time of 12:52.58, and Reedich, Synder, Darden, and Lee brought home a strong fourth place finish for Bromfield.
The 4 x 400-meter relay team ended the day just as it had started for the Bromfield girls track team, bringing in a final first-place finish with a time of 4:11.67. The race came down to the final leg, anchored by star junior Katherine Finnegan. Finding herself in second place coming into the final lap, Finnegan flew by Marian High School’s anchor runner in the last 100 meters to come in number one.
Finnegan also ran the 4 x 200-meter relay, along with Lexie Daniells, Julia Alexander, and Kim West. The team took fourth place, missing the school record by two hundredths of a second to clock a time of 1:50.88. Katie Finnegan, Katy Park, Kathryn Kennedy, and Grace Bilodeau ran for Bromfield’s second 4 x 200 team.
“Everybody ran really well,” said Kennedy of the two 4 x 200 relay teams. “Relays are an opportunity to try something new. It’s different from individual races because you’re working as a team. That makes it a lot of fun.”
Bromfield sprinters also earned points in the sprint medley relay, an event in which runners complete an 800-meter leg, two 200-meter legs, and a 400-meter leg. Marissa Dickson, Niki Jordan, Grace Bilodeau, and Hillary Lewis comprised the “A” team, clocking a time of 4:40.27 to place sixth. Bromfield’s second sprint medley relay team, made up of Emma Rothkopf, Katie Finnegan, Ailee Katz, and Christie Devlin, also ran a strong race, finishing with a time of 4:56.10.
In the 4 x 50-meter relay, Jordan, eighth-grader Elizabeth Noyes, Park, and Lewis teamed up to run a time of 27.53 seconds. Lewis, who was competing in the long-jump relay as the 4 x 50 event was happening, learned that she was anchoring the relay at the last minute and ran the race in between jumps. Despite the confusion, the team ran the fastest time a Bromfield 4 x 50-meter relay team has ever run at the State Class Relays.
“It means a lot to us to run that time,” said Jordan, a junior who is now running stronger than ever after being out last season with a knee injury. “Relays require cooperation, teamwork, and a special bond between the runners. I think that we had that today. It is important to work together and to do your best.”
