LEWISTON – It wasn’t hard to pick Edward Little’s Colby Brooks out of the crowd at Monday’s Class A state indoor track and field championships Monday.
It was just hard to catch up to him.
Brooks, only a junior, won three state titles (two individual and one as part of a relay) to help the Red Eddies to a sixth-place finish at Bates College’s Merrill Auditorium.
“He’s come such a long way,” said EL coach Ryan Laroche. “He has physically and emotionally matured in the last year, and it really shows. He has filled in muscularly and taken the role as team captain seriously. He leads by example.”
Overall, the boys’ meet was decided nearly before it began. Portland was seeded to win by more than 50 points, and took home the title by 51 points over Deering.
“That’s been the roughest thing all year for us,” said Portland coach Carroll Nappi. “When other coaches start pointing fingers saying, they’re the ones to beat,’ that was one of the biggest burdens all year. Everyone and their brother was saying how we had it in the bag.”
Led by brothers Ayalew and Sintayehu Taye (44 points combined) and Skip Edwards (30 points), the Bulldogs took first place in six of the 14 events, and finished second in another. Edwards swept the long and high jump and 400-meter dash, setting the state record in the 400 by .04 seconds.
“One (Taye brother) is a junior, and the other is just a freshman,” said Nappi. “Then you have Edwards who sweeps his events, and all of the other guys on the team who, even though they didn’t get top billing, still stuck together. We started the season with 27 kids and that’s how we finished.”
Despite Edwards’ performance, Brooks’ surprise emergence in the speed events was a remarkable story. In the 55-meter dash, Brooks bested a six-year-old state record held by Nick Nappi of Cheverus by one one-hundredth of a second, finishing the sprint in 6.61 seconds.
“I didn’t really think I could hit that coming into today, honestly,” said Brooks. “After the heats, though, when I tied it, I really tried to go after it in the last run.”
“Scary thing is, he hitched at the start,” said Laroche. “He told me afterwards that he thought he saw a false start and hitched. Even with that he got it.”
In the 200-meter dash, Brooks fell one-tenth of a second short of the state record, and he, Jon Demers, Gardner LaValley and Chris Ash came less than a second from besting a school record en route to a win in the 4×200-meter relay.
Following Portland and Deering to the line, meanwhile, were Waterville (this year’s KVAC champion) with 42 points, South Portland with 38 and Brunswick with 34.
In one of the more bizarre instances of the day, Lewiston High School (which, paced by Matt Cyr’s third-place finish in the pole vault, finished with 12 points in 12th place) lost nine points after race officials decided to re-run the boys’ 400-meter dash.
“We had an athlete that did not finish the race because he was fouled,” said meet director George Mendros. “It happened behind the Nos. 1 and 2 finishers, so they did not have to re-run, but the rest of them, if they wanted to place, had to re-run the race.”
Lewiston, after the disqualification, had finished third and fourth, but after the re-race, the Blue Devils’ runners finished sixth and eighth.
Also, Lewiston’s 4×200-meter team had the second-fastest time of the day and would have finished behind EL with eight points in the event, but they were disqualified after a handoff went awry and the baton exchanged hands outside the allowed zone.
Red Storm overtake Trojans
The first sign that the day just wasn’t going to go right for Thornton Academy came during warm-ups for the day’s first event. Kat Rice, expected to take upwards of 15 points for the Trojans, broke her ankle while warming up for the pole vault.
Scarborough, only seeded 11 points back to begin the day, came up with some top-notch performances and knocked off the defending champions 105-78.
“It’s bittersweet for us, really,” said Thornton coach Mark DeFrancesco. “No doubt it’s one of the most disappointing things to happen to us, but you look at everyone else, they all performed above and beyond expectations.”
“We knew by seeds that Thornton was the better team,” said Scarborough coach Ron Kelley. “I knew they had maxed out in a lot of events, where we had more room to improve. Rice would have made it tighter, but with the scored the kids put up today, I still think we would have had it. But you just never know.”
Jenny Pierpont of Thornton won three events (55-meter dash, 200-meter dash and long jump) to earn 30 points, while Beth and Jessie Wilcox combined to earn 50 points with two individual wins each to go with a relay win in the 4×800-meters.
Deering High School took third overall in the girls’ race with 52 points, followed by Mt. Ararat at 51 and Waterville with 30.
Kelsey Biliouris of Livermore Falls earned seven points as the lone entrant from her school, while Tiffany Leblonde earned four points for Lewiston.
Kristen Keene and Rachel Barlion finished 2-3 in the long jump for Edward Little and Amanda Burgess picked up a point in the 800-meters to give the Red Eddies 15 points on the day.
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