It was a good day to be part of the Beverly and Lynn Classical girls? track teams on Thursday at the Reggie Lewis Track & Athletic Center in Roxbury.
Classical?s quartet of Devyn Astuccio, Agnes Bangura, Jenn Gaudet and Anna Wargo ran a 1 minute, 47.30 seconds to win the 4×200-meter relay on the same track on which they won the Northeastern Conference title last month. Bangura also had a second-place finish in the 55-meter dash in 7.38 seconds as the Rams finished with 18 points to take 10thplace overall.
?Those four girls really stepped up (Thursday),” Classical coach Steve Martin said. “They ran confident and they ran clean.”
Gaudet and Wargo also just missed placing in the 300-meter run as they finished 10th(43.33) and 13th(43.74), respectively.
The Panthers, meanwhile, were in the mix to win the team title right down to the final event. Beverly finished with 36.42 points and a sixth-place finish overall. King Philip won the title with 49 points. The top six teams were separated by fewer than 10 points.
The highlight of the meet for the Panthers came in the 4×800-meter relay where Abby Walsh, Julianna Wesley, Julia Curtin and Nora Monahan smashed the existing meet record of 9:38.82 by nearly three seconds, winning in 9:35.38.
Curtin was runner-up in the 1,000-meter run (3:01.11). Walsh (5:06.46) and Wesley (5:14.45) were fourth and fifth in the mile. Lexi Sutyak added a fourth in the two-mile race (11:45.0) for the Panthers.
Salem finished 25thwith five points as Desiree Martin was fifth in the 55-meter dash (7.58) and Abbie Meadowcroft placed eighth in the shotput with a distance of 32 feet, 8 ? inches.
In the boys? competition, Salem finished 14thwith 10 points and Beverly was 24thas a team.The Witches Taran Wigfall was third in the long jump (21-0) and fifth in the 300-meter run (36.56). Beverly?s lone point-scoring finish came in Bryan Flaherty?s sixth place in the 600-meter run (1:24.30).