On a warm spring afternoon – the first solid competition weather for Track & Field this year – Deerfield hosted Choate Rosemary Hall and St. Paul’s School for their sole home competition of the season. Deerfield showed up in strong numbers for every event and impressed the home crowd with a 144-point performance, their strongest tri-meet showing in memory.
Deerfield took 44 of 64 scoring places in the meet, including 1st place in each of the 17 events in the meet. In five events (the 400, 3000, 300 Hurdles, High Jump, and Long Jump), Deerfield scored all four available places, while in five others (the 100, Shot Put, Discus, Javelin, and Pole Vault), Deerfield took three places.
It was a complete team performance, but highlights include new team season bests in the 200 (Jackson Rose won in 22.40), the 400 (Farouk Mukhtar lowered his season-best to 51.91), the 800 (Robbie Hua ran 2:01.38), the 300 Hurdles (Chandler Dicks lowered his season-best to 40.58), the Shot Put (Chigozie Oge-Evans threw 51’ 9.5”), and the Long Jump (Chandler Dicks jumped 21’ 3”).
Deerfield athletes also ran, jumped, threw and vaulted well outside of the scoring places, with a host of new personal bests from newer and younger athletes. The positive impact of the developing athletes carried forward into a JV meet at Northfield Mount Hermon on Wednesday, which the Deerfield JV team won by a point.
Deerfield will compete one more time this Saturday in preparation for the league championship meet, in New Hampshire against Exeter and Northfield Mount Hermon.