Laura White
At the MIAA Division II Indoor Track & Field Championship on Feb. 13, senior Max Brown jumps 5.43m in the long jump, placing 22nd out of 24 jumpers.
The boys’ track team capped off what was expected to be a rebuilding year with the ultimate prize, edging out Peabody by a single point to win the program’s first ever State Championship.
After a meet where every ARHS athlete did their job and then some, the Titans led the 35-team competition by two points before the final event, the 4×400 meter relay. Peabody needed to place sixth or better to claim the State Championship and was expected to do so, but a fumbled handoff dropped them to eighth place and Algonquin won the meet by one point.
The Titans did not have a team running in the 4×400, so they could only watch and wait.
“[Winning is] essentially out of your hands,” head coach Corey Pooler said. “You’re hoping that something goes your way. You don’t want to hope poorly on another team, but at the same time, you’re rooting for the other teams that are in the event. It was fun to watch the race, know that we had a chance, [and] know that if one or two things go our way then we’re state champions.”
This was Pooler’s second year as head coach, and his experience with last year’s team, which broke many records and placed third at States, differed from his experience with this year’s team.
“Last year I feel that we had a lot of guys in the same events that could score together,” Pooler said. “This year had more individuals who were probably going to score, others that weren’t even in the meet. It’s a lot of high pressure when you only have one guy in an event and that one guy has to get the job done.”
One of the guys that got the job done was senior captain Jonah Gould, who placed first in the mile, running a personal record time of 4:24:98.
“My indoor season last year was a little disappointing, so this year, to have success like that is super exciting,” Gould said.
Between his win in the mile and placing eighth with junior Trent Bedard and sophomores Stephen Green and Finn McManus on the 4x800m relay team, Gould scored 11 of the team’s 43 points.
“It felt pretty good to score that for my team and know that I was a good contributor to the win,” Gould said.
Other high scorers were seniors Miles Lipka and Max Brown, who respectively placed first and fourth in the high jump. Lipka also placed fourth in the long jump and first in the 55m hurdles, setting a school record of 7.56. (Two weeks later Lipka went on to set school and state records in the pentathlon, scoring 4,021 points, which put him at first in the nation for this year, with the tenth highest score ever in the U.S.)
“Last year, we were one of the favorites for the state meet, but I got injured two days before and we came up just short,” Lipka said. “To redeem myself this year and get enough points for the team to win was an incredible feeling.”
Another school record was set in the 55m by senior Max Eigen, who ran for a sixth place finish with a time of 6.60.
Pooler believes the hard work of many athletes made the difference this year.
“[We’ve had] a lot of guys who are super committed, coming to practice constantly, trying to work in the offseason, work during the season and build that culture that we’re trying to have every year,” Pooler said.