2005 Group III Relays

The Westfield Girls 4 by 800 relay defended its Group III crown Sunday at Jadwin Gym Princeton but it was far from the easy triumph of a year ago.

The Blue Devils, who cruised by seventeen seconds last year in 9:47.20 ran three seconds slower but their 9:50.96. was enough to edge Morris Knolls, which was second in 9:54.93.

“The goal was to win it again and to finish in under 10 minutes and they
accomplished that,” said coach Jen Buccino.

Westfield’s winning quartet featured three holdovers from a year ago with Senior Annie Onishi again getting them off to a solid lead with a 2:24.9 split. Another returnee, Junior Meg Driscoll followed in 2:32.3 and handed the baton to Junior Miriam Becker-Cohen, the only newcomer who ran 2:31.2 giving anchor Emily MacNeil a solid lead which she maintained through the finish line with a 2:22.4 clocking.

”Each of the girls did her job, “ said Buccino.
“We nearly replicated last year's splits despite the meet
coming earlier in the season.”

The big question mark coming into the meet was the fitness of Driscoll who had missed much of the cross-country season with a stress fracture.

“Meg is not 100% yet but she is getting stronger every day since she was in good shape in the fall. Her performance was very impressive yesterday when you consider she that she missed all of November for training, has been doing modified workouts, and working with the B group during track sessions ,” said Buccino.

The triumph helped the Blue Devil Girls to a fifth place finish in the team standings, well behind powerful Willingboro which tallied 46.

MacNeil,Becker-Cohen, and Onishi combined sophomore Gillian Kape to finish fourth in the 4 by 400 relay to provide Westfield’s other points.

The Westfield Boys concluded a busy week with a fourth place finish in the Group 3 Boys Meet. Earlier in the week the Blue Devils had swept the three distance relays en route to a fourth place finish at the Union County Relays.

Junior All State Cross Country runner Jeffrey Perrella, junior Kris Kagan and senior Rob Broadbent each ran on two winning teams at the county meet and combined with senior Scott Steinberg to finish third in the Group III distance medley in 10:56. Broadbent anchored the sprint medley to a third place finish. The first three runners were junior Tyler Maccubbin and seniors Jake Brandman and Sam Kim.

The top finish at the state meet for Westfield was the pole vault where the team of seniors Mike Woods and Mike Gorski finished second with a combined 23 feet 6 inches.

The Scotch Plains boys won both field events at the Union County meet to nearly win the team title. Multi talented Sean Smith and Iceberg Bryant won the high jump, while Ted Acosta, Mike Alleman and John Badala edged Elizabeth in the shot put as the Raiders scored 34 points Another strong Scotch Plains team is their shuttle hurdles quartet of Smith, Bryant, Nehemiah Burney-Porter and James Alfano which was second at the county meet and third in the state competition.