Rye Indoor Track Sweeps League Championship Meet in ‘Selfless’ Performance
Both the boys and girls sides of the Rye Indoor Track Team reigned victorious over there Section 1 counterparts on Sunday, January 12. The boys won a close race with Edgemont, while the girls dominated the competition, winning by 74.
“Both wins were fueled by athletes who adopted a selfless, team-first attitude,” Head Coach Bryan Johnson told MyRye.com after the meet. “Athletes on both sides were willing to make sacrifices for the total team score, something we’d talked about a lot during the week.”
Girls
Twenty-one different athletes earned top five placements in individual or team events, with 14 doing so multiple times. Overall, the Garnets scored 158 points as a team, ahead of Eastchester (84), Edgemont (60), and Pelham (33). Here were the key individual performers:
Matilda Glitterstam: 5th weight throw
Lucy Carey: PR in the long jump
4×200 (Jill DeSanto – Fukudome – Garate – Bubeck): 1st place
4×800 (Oberbannscheidt – Ambrosini – Shingler – Schatz): 2nd place
4×400 (Margot Kelly – Kearney – Curran – Fitz): top 5 placement
“What was great was seeing all the girls stepping up to contribute,” Girls Head Coach Kevin Murphy told MyRye.com. “Whether it was by learning new events like racewalk or weight throw, or by being active on the side cheering each other on during the night.”
According to Johnson and Murphy, several of the athletes spent good chunks of practice leading up to the meet on Sunday working with throwing coach Joel Jenson on the weight throw event. That event was crucial to Rye’s dominant win, earning them considerable points.
Boys
Although a much closer matchup, the boys side of the team also took care of business, scoring 130 points to top Edgemont (114), Pelham (29), and Eastchester (28). Fourteen unique athletes earned top five placements in individual or team events, including twelve who did so in more than one event. In fact, every single participant earned at least one point for the Garnets.
“We’d talked all week about the importance of scoring points for the team, and credit goes to Sean Rinaldi and Will Morreale who ran both the 3200 and 4×800, events they don’t normally do,” Johnson told MyRye.com. “Calvin Holler, a thrower, ran a leg on the 4×800, and Jack Truman ran leadoff on the 4×800 and then came back two events later to run a hard lead on the 4×400. Both relays scored points for the team.”
Here were all the point scorer for the boys:
Kai McCulloch: 4th weight throw
4×200 (Miles Silber – Walker – Timchak – Kaplan): 3rd place
4×800 (Rinaldi – Morreale – J. Truman – Holler): 3rd place
4×400 (J. Truman – B. Truman – Stark – MacKinnon): 1st place
“I’ve been coaching for 20 years, and I’ve never seen someone pick [up vaulting] as easy as him,” Boys Head Coach Blair Moynahan said of Calvin Timchak, who did not start pole vaulting until earlier in the week. Moynahan and Johnson tried Timchak at the event because it did not have a lot of entries, but no one could have expected a first place finish like the versatile freshman provided.
The big wins for Rye have them flying high into their next meet as a team – not until Saturday, January 25. Johnson and his team will have almost two weeks to practice and prepare for a much larger-scale meet featuring more than 30 other New York State schools across every section. Start time for that meet is scheduled for 6:00pm at the familiar Armory Track in NYC.
