Rye’s boys and girls indoor track and field teams both won league titles on Dec. 12.
The Rye boys scored 130 points, 16 more than runner-up Edgemont, and the Rye girls scored 158, nearly doubling the team total of runner-up Eastchester.
“Both wins were fueled by athletes who adopted a selfless, team-first attitude,” said Rye coach Bryan Johnson. “Athletes on both sides were willing to make sacrifices for the total team score, something we’d talked about a lot during the week. We did a lot of strategizing among our coaches, but also with the athletes as to how we could best score points as a team.”
Individual league champions on the girls side were Erin Ball in high jump and long jump, Sophia Bubeck in the 55-meter hurdles, Claire Curran in the 300 and 1,000, and the 4×200 relay team composed of Jill DeSanto, Riho Fukudome, Iciar Garate, and Bubeck.
On the boys side, individual league champions for Rye were Aidan Schmidt in long jump, Alex Schatz in triple jump, Calvin Timchak in pole vault, Ben Truman in the 300 and 600, Tino MacKinnon in the 3,200, and the 4×400 relay team composed of Jack Truman, Ben Truman, Clayton Stark, and MacKinnon.
Jack Truman was among many Garnets who put in extra work to help the team win the meet.
“He ran leadoff on the 4×800 and then came back two events later to run a hard lead on the 4×400,” said boys coach Blair Moynahan. “We’d talked all week about the importance of scoring points for the team, and credit goes to Sean Rinaldi and Will Morreale who ran both the 3,200 and 4×800, events they don’t normally do.”
Meanwhile, Timchak just started to pole vault the week of the meet and wound up winning the league title in the event, along with a second-place finish in high jump.
“I’ve been coaching for 20 years,” Moynahan said, “and I’ve never seen someone pick [up vaulting] as easy as him.”
The girls also found success in unfamiliar events, earning points in racewalk and weight throw that contributed to the impressive total team score.
“Many of the girls spent the week working with our throwing coach, Joel Jenson, to learn the weight throw, an event which earned us considerable points,” said girls coach Kevin Murphy. “Lucy Carey also stepped up in the long jump, setting a PR in the process. What was great was seeing all the girls stepping up to contribute, whether it was by learning new events or by being active on the side, cheering each other on during the night.”
