Four years of grit and grind paid off in a storybook ending for the Conant track team on Sunday, as the Oriole boys won their first state championship since 1998 at the Division III meet in Pelham.
“I’m a little speechless right now, but it’s amazing,” said head coach Bill Edson, soaking wet after senior hurdler Austin Poikonen’s celebratory water bucket dump. “It’s so difficult to win a championship, especially in track and field in a small school, because you’ve got to be deep enough to do it. And we created depth, but they still have to do it. And they did.”
The state title win culminated Conant’s four-year journey since Edson took over the program and since the Orioles’ star-studded senior class joined the team with him as freshmen.
“They’re the first class that I’ve had for all four years since I’ve been to Conant,” Edson said. “So it’s fitting for them to be the ones that carry the trophy off, and they’ve come so close before, in cross-country and last year in track. And so to be able to bring them to the top? They deserve it. They earned it. They’re special kids.”
Senior Garrett Somero started the meet with a bang for the Orioles, stepping up to the shot put and heaving it 46 feet on his first throw to set a mark no other competitor came within three feet of. Somero came in as the defending DIII champion, but hadn’t competed for a month after tearing his hamstring; he showed no signs of rust as he stepped over to the discus looking to repeat in that event as well. Belmont’s Brian Miles held the lead at 122’10” going into the final throw, but Somero was able to find another level.
“It came down to the last throw for discus and the guy was ahead of me by like two feet,” Somero said. “I had one throw left, and I was like, ‘Just give it my all,’ and ended up beating him by like 13 feet.” Somero won the discus at 135’5”, and the Orioles had a quick 20 points on the board.
Not to be outdone, Gilford’s junior distance stud Patrick Gandini went for the back-to-back trifecta, winning the 800m, 1,600m and 3,200m for the second straight year and putting Gilford into first place, where they’d stay for nearly the entire meet.
School-record-holding senior Ethan Vitello got it done in the 200m, winning in 22.53, and scored in the triple jump with a third-place finish behind repeat champion Shane Wang of Concord Christian. Unlike last year’s state meet, where the Orioles couldn’t catch a break, something unexpected went in Conant’s favor, as the top-seeded Wang scratched out of the long jump, opening the door for the Orioles.
Vitello landed in second to add yet more points, and freshman Ben Sawyer, who’d already won the high jump at 6’, leapt for another first-place finish with a 22’7”, and the Orioles were racking up points.
“This is absolutely a redemption day,” Vitello said. “There’s no doubt about it.”
Sawyer was the missing piece of the puzzle for Conant this year, adding a big-time jumper to diversify their field scoring potential.
“It means a lot,” Sawyer said after the championship win. “It’s really mind-blowing. I never would’ve thought that we’d be here right now. It’s crazy. And I’m just happy that I was able to provide for my team.”
Conant got a point from Poikonen with a sixth-place finish in the 300m hurdles and six from the third-place 4x800m relay team of senior John Mormando, freshman Nathan Alajajian, senior John Oakes and junior Jacob Sawyer. Going into the final event of the day, the Orioles did their math and believed they were ahead of Gilford by one point, but since both teams were contenders in the 4x400m relay, Conant needed to beat Gilford in the final race to win the state title.
“Our 4×4 team…has been the best in the state all year long,” Edson said. “If I was a betting man, and it came down to a 4×4 race, I’d be betting on us.”
That was a safe bet. Senior Michael Brooks sped around the first leg and handed off to sophomore Jon Ciglar; by the time the baton got around to Vitello, Gilford had a lead, but there was absolutely no way Vitello was going out in second place. The senior annihilated Gilford’s edge, took a huge lead, and handed off to the freshman Sawyer for the final leg; Sawyer left Gandini in his rear view and sped around for the win, clinching the championship.
“It was the literal handing of the baton from the old guard to the new guard when Vitello handed it to Ben Sawyer and then Ben brought it home to win it,” Edson said. “That was literally handing the baton to the next era of our track and field program.”
The Orioles had their math right, and were jubilant after the race, but they wouldn’t celebrate in earnest until the results came over the loudspeaker, sparking off an explosion of joy unrivaled by the fireworks show waiting for them back in Jaffrey and unextinguished by the gallons of water poured onto Edson and assistant coach Chris Bernier.
“To be able to send, you know, Vitello, Garrett and Poikonen off, and the other seniors, with this as their last memory, it’s just priceless,” Edson said. “Doesn’t get any better than that for a coach.”
Edson said that he’d invested more time and energy into this season than any other in his 29 years coaching; between the athletes’ talent and drive, their cross-country, soccer and track seasons that came up just short, and tragic off-the-track losses of family members and former teammates, it was a group worth investing in.
“These kids are special, and it is the best team I’ve ever had,” Edson said. “And because they have suffered through that adversity, I did not want them to be disappointed again, because it’s all about them.”
The championship announcement hit the loudspeaker nearly six hours after the athletes had arrived for checkins; the sunny day turned to a cool evening, with mosquitos swarming in the twilight, but the Orioles stayed on the infield even after the lights turned out in Pelham, savoring every last moment of their victory.
Sunday was a full-circle moment for Mascenic senior Connor Traffie, who anchored the Vikings’ winning 4x800m relay team. As a freshman, Traffie was on the last Mascenic relay team to win a state title, teaming with Landen Vaillancourt, Dakota Somero and Logan Thibault to make it all the way to New Englands.
“I was definitely the weak link in that one,” Traffie said Sunday. As a freshman, he was prone to getting passed, so he learned a valuable lesson in how to run from behind, sticking right with them if they didn’t extend a gap immediately. Now as the elder statesman, he applied that lesson in reverse.
“The one thing that I learned,” Traffie said, “is if someone passes you, it’s really easy to stick on them for some reason when it’s just two laps, so trying to make a gap between you and the person behind you is really key.”
Senior Jethro Somero ran the first leg of Sunday’s 4x800m according to plan.
“I ran it just the way my coach wanted me to,” Somero said, “which was take the first lap out with whoever was in the lead and then in the middle of the second lap, just to rip as fast as I could. And I did, and I think I got like 20 meters on him.”
Junior Drew Traffie took over for the second leg, where Prospect Mountain was able to make some headway and take a slight lead.
“I just tried to get it in as close as possible,” he said.
Junior Ryan O’Shea entered the spring playing for both Mascenic’s baseball and track teams, but chose to commit to track with visions of the 4×8 title in his head.
“I actually wanted this bad enough that I quit playing baseball,” O’Shea said. The sacrifice paid off on Sunday, as he took the baton for the third leg, passed Prospect’s leader, and got a little distance before coming around to give it to Connor Traffie.
As Traffie waited for the handoff, Mascenic coach Mike Smith shouted over to him: “Get out of sight!” Traffie did just that, widening the inherited gap before flagging down the stretch, but still able to get over the finish line with a state-title-winning 8:42.78.
Wilton-Lyndeborough senior Sam Boette was the defending champion in the 100m and 200m dashes, but ceded her title in the 100m to Belmont junior Emma Winslow, who edged out Boette’s 12.98-second PR with a scant 12.86 after both cut over half a second from their time compared to last year’s scores.
Boette, WLC’s top track star in recent memory, bounced back quickly in her strongest event, the 200m, where she set another personal record and held off Monadnock’s Liliana Chirichella, who’d beaten her in Jaffrey earlier in the spring. Boette took home the DIII title in 26.63 and can race again at Saturday’s Meet of Champions at Sanborn.
The Orioles got a handful of points in the girls’ competition. Conant’s 4×800 relay team of Neve Mormando, Lainey Holombo, Emma Tenters and Adrienne Kennedy took third in 10:29.93; Newmarket won the event with a meet-record time of 9:54.53.
Junior Kylie Aho took fourth in the 1,600m run in 5:46.44.
Freshman Amber Gnoza took sixth in the 3,200m run in 12:59.32.
The 4x400m relay team of Holombo, Rhianna Aho, Kennedy and Tenters took sixth in 4:29.78.
For Mascenic, Jethro Somero scored in the 1,600m, finishing fifth. Senior Jimmy Crawford took fifth in shot put with a 40’5”.
The Mascenic girls did not score, but still had a solid competitions from Emma Schaumloffel (14th, 1,600m), Brielle Shippee (13th, 3,200m), Mackenzie Vaillancourt (13th, high jump) and the 4x800m relay team of Vaillancourt, Amelia Smith, Victoria Smith and Schaumloffel, which finished 10th.
The ConVal track and field team competed at the DII meet at Pelham earlier in the day.
The Cougar girls finished 13th, with scoring performances from Tasha MacNeil (second, javelin; fifth, 100m dash; sixth, shot put) and Elise Robbins (fourth, pole vault).
The ConVal boys did not score as a team, but got top-10 performances from Kendrick Edwards (10th, 100m; ninth, 200m) and Ian Post (ninth, 1,600m; eighth, 3,200m).