Boyer’s three individual titles helps FA boys finish second at states

    LEWISTON — Senior Don Boyer and junior Ryan Wang may have been the only Foxcroft Academy boys to place at the 2013 Class B Indoor Track and Field Championship on Feb. 18 at Bates College, but their performances were good enough to account for 46 points and a second-place finish out of 27 teams.

    The Ponies outperformed 25 schools for the highest finish at a state track meet in program history, just ahead of the 44 points for Waterville High School and 42 for Falmouth High School. Only York High School’s 76 points were more than Foxcroft’s as York earned the Class B boys crown for the second season in a row.

    Boyer won the 55 hurdles and triple and high jumps to account for 30 of the 46 Foxcroft points. In the 55 hurdles he set a new Class B state record with a time of 7.68 seconds, a week after he set a new conference standard in the event at 7.66 seconds. The old record for the Class B championship was an electronic converted time of 7.74 seconds set by Alan Baldwin of Hampden Academy over a quarter of a century prior in 1987.

    In the triple jump Boyer set a personal best of 41 feet, 9.5 inches on the first of his six attempts. Boyer would end up finishing in first place by just a half an inch over York junior Tom Reid, who he earlier edged by .3 seconds in the 55 hurdle finals.

    Boyer concluded his day by winning the high jump at 6-00, two inches better than runners-up senior Jake Levangie and sophomore Owen Falvey of Belfast High School. Boyer also won the high jump at last spring’s Class C outdoor championship, and his performances in all three events qualified him to compete in the New England championship meet on March 2 at the Reggie Lewis Track and Athletic Facility in Boston.

    Wang picked up 16 points for Foxcroft by placing in the top four in all three of the sprints. Wang was third in the 55 at 6.75 seconds, just a hundredth of a second behind his school record set at the conference championship. He was right behind the 6.71 seconds run by Falmouth senior Jacob Buhelt and Wang and Buhelt helped push Wells High School senior Denzel Tomaszewski to a new Class B record in the 55 of 6.53 seconds. Tomaszewski had set the previous event mark the year before at 6.58 seconds and he and Boyer were the only Class B boys to set state records in 2013.

    The trio of sprinters also finished in the top three in the 200 as Wang’s time of 23.79 seconds was good for third place. This time Buhelt got the first-place finish with Tomaszewski second, at 23.23 and 23.69 seconds respectively.

    Wang was the only one of the three who ran in the 400, and he ended up in fourth place with a time of 53.76 seconds. The winning time was 51.52 seconds for York junior Josh Brooks.

    Several other Foxcroft athletes competed in the state meet. The 4×200 relay team, comprised of senior Jacob LaBree, sophomores Peter Boyer and Justin Diamond and senior Jasper Thompson, finished in eighth place at 1:39.53 —  just over a tenth of a second shy of placing at the meet. LaBree was 10th in the 55-prelims at 7.03 seconds, and senior Cody Levensalor finished 10th in the shot put with a top throw of 41-01.25.

    Thompson ran to a 13th-place finish in the 200 at 24.94 seconds. The Pony 4×800 relay (sophomores Noah Simpson and Julian Zepeda and freshmen James Smith and Abraham Simpson) competed but ended up getting disqualified on an interference call.

    The Foxcroft girls scored 11 points to tie Old Town High School for 14th place out of a field of 27 schools. Pony sophomore Fern Morrison scored all 11 of her team’s points in the 400 and 800.

    Morrison, who won the 400 at last spring’s Class C outdoor championship, had the second-fastest time of the meet in the 400 at 1:01.15, three tenths of a second behind Waterville sophomore Lydia Roy’s 1:01.85. Morrison added a fifth-place finish in the 800 for the other three Pony points. She ran a time of 2:28.63.

    Junior Mia Smith took part in the pole vault at the state championship. Smith placed eighth in the event at a height of 8 feet, six inches away from finishing in the top six.

    With 112 points Waterville won the team championship, finishing over 40 points ahead of second place Greely High School of Cumberland with 69.6 points. Waterville won the girls title for the third season in a row and fifth time in the last seven years. The 2013 championship is the program’s ninth overall between Class B and Class A.

    Waterville senior Bethanie Brown set two of the four Class B records at the meet. Brown’s time of 5:00.31 in the mile broke the mark she had set a year prior at 5:02.15. In the two mile Brown ran a time of 10:496.95 to break an eight-year-old record of 10:48.28 set by Old Town’s Cassie Hintz in 2005.

    Sophomore Kate Hall of Lake Region High School in Naples also set a pair of girls Class B records. Hall’s time of 25.62 seconds in the 200 surpassed the 25.94 set by Logan Crane of Freeport High School in 2004. In the long jump Hall jumped a distance of 17-11.50, five inches more than the previous record of 17-06.50 established by Emily Mitchell of York in 2011.