AUGUSTA — The Mountain Valley Conference track and field championships ended Thursday at Cony High School without a bang — for now.
As Hall-Dale’s Emma Wilson, Monmouth’s Cary Knowles and nine other runners toed the line under a steady downpour, each waited in anticipation for the starters’ gun to signal the beginning of the girls 1,600 meters.
The suspense was met only with a click, though, as the heavy rain had saturated the gun’s blanks and unofficially signaled the end of the meet for the time being. A few moments later it was officially postponed and ultimately moved to 2 p.m., Monday at Cony with 10 events having been completed.
“Mother nature had other plans,” Hall-Dale coach Jarod Richmond said. “I really commend everybody involved trying to get this thing in (Thursday) and we’ll come back on Monday. It will be better conditions and it’s a bummer we couldn’t wait a little bit longer, but understandable with the weather conditions.”
The meet began under shaky conditions Thursday. At 3:15 p.m. meet officials requested athletes and spectators return to their vehicles with thunder heard in the distance, and approximately 20 minutes later rain had consistently began falling.
By 4 p.m. — the meets originally scheduled start time — the adverse weather had moved on, 30 minutes later athletes and spectators returned to Alumni Field and the meet finally began at 4:45 p.m. with the field events teeming with activity. Everything went on as scheduled until a little after 6 p.m. when another storm front engulfed the area, ultimately leading to the final stoppage some 10- to 15-minutes later.
“I’m pleased with how far we got through it,” Madison coach Tobin Curtis said. “Monday is OK, we’ve got half of a meet to go. It actually benefits some of our kids because they’re tired.”
Lisbon entered the meet seeking its 10th straight MVC championship, and — in the case of the boys team particularly — Thursday’s rain may just have delayed the inevitable. The Greyhounds held a 59-26 lead over second-place Boothbay through five events, with Madison (22 points), Mountain Valley (15) and Dirigo (14) rounding out the top five.
While the meet still has quite a ways to go, the Lisbon girls have yet to equal such an advantage as the Greyhounds are only ahead of Monmouth 38-36. Boothbay (19 1/2), Mountain Valley (16 1/2) and Winthrop (15) round out the top five.
In terms of individual results on the girls side, Lisbon was the only team with multiple first-place finishes as Chase Collier captured the 100 and the Greyhounds’ 4×800 team of Mikayla Yanez, Sydney Douglas, Emma Houle and Bree Sautter won as well.
Monmouth’s Abby Allen cleared 4 feet, 8 inches to take the high jump over Winthrop’s Kinli DiBiase and Ayanna Main, each of whom cleared 4-6. Boothbay’s Morgan Crocker breezed to a win in the 100 hurdles, while St. Dominic’s Sydney Sirois handily won the race walk.
On the boys side, Mountain Valley’s Kyle Farrar beat out Madison’s Jordan Curtis in a driving rain by just one-hundredth of a second, while the Bulldogs’ Matt Curtis came up short in the 110 hurdles against Lisbon’s Charles Adams.
Lisbon also picked up wins in the shot put and race walk from Andrew Golino and Jeff Wiley, respectively, while the team of Ben Buck, Jacob Larsen, Cody Cunningham and Hunter White claimed the 4×800 relay for Dirigo.
Evan Crawley — 621-5640
ecrawley@mainetoday.com
Twitter: @Evan_Crawley
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