By BOB YORK
“We ended up just about where we expected to end up this season,” said Mike Schloat, the Deerfield Academy track coach. And that meant his charges split the competition right down the middle at this year’s New England Prep School Athletic Council Track and Field Championships. His boys placed seventh in a 14-team field, while the girls wound up seventh in a list of 12 teams.
This spring’s run for the roses, which was hosted by Choate Rosemary Hall, belonged to Exeter, as both its boys and girls teams finished atop the final standings in their respective meets. The Big Red boys topped the charts with 94 points, while Choate used its home-court advantage to grab a silver medal with a 70-point effort. Loomis Chaffee filled the final spot on the medals podium with a third-place finish after compiling 64.5 points. The Deerfield boys, meanwhile, mustered 36 points on the day.
As for the girls meet, Exeter breezed to victory, chalking up a whopping 116 points, while Hotchkiss and Loomis were left to haggle over the leftovers. Hotchkiss ended up with the silver medal, as it bested Loomis by a single point, 79-78.
The Big Green boys were led by their season-long standouts on this Championship Saturday. Reed Horton (14) rang up 18 point for the Deerfield cause by winning the 800-meter run in a time of 1:58.92 and finishing second in the 1,500-meter run in 4:03.27. And the only reason Horton, who was named recipient of this year’s Deerfield Academy Track Trophy, didn’t win the race was because teammate George Reich (13) did. Reich, the winner of this year’s Jack Dolph Trophy, set the pace over the 1,500-meter course with a blue-ribbon time of 4:03.03.
Horton also helped the Big Green to a 10th place finish in the 4X400 relay, where he and Jay D’Amour (13), Sunho Park (14) and Nate Lane (14) combined to post a time of 3:44.15. Wyatt Sharpe (13), meanwhile, who would later be named winner of the 1983 Team Award, proved to be Deerfield’s only other medal winner as he grabbed a second-place finish in the pole vault at a height of 11-6.
Elsewhere around the track, Robert Beit (13) was clocked in 9:23.84 to post an eighth-place finish in the 3,000-meter run, while the foursome of Grant Newburger (15), Patrick Ononibaku (14), Blake O’Neal (15) and Park were 10th in the 4X100 relay. The javelin event saw D’Amour place 13th at 124-07 and Chris Ortega (13) wind up 17th at 118-02, while D’Amour also wound up 15th in the 400-meter dash with a time of 55.38.
Over in the girls competition, Deerfield finished with a pair of medals on the day, as both Devinne Cullinane (14) and Rose Fisher (13) came through with bronze-medal efforts. Cullinane, who received this year’s Deerfield Academy Track Trophy, placed third in the 1,500-meter run in a time of 4:47.77, while Fisher, the winner of the 1983 Team Award, finished third in the 3,000-meter run with a clocking of 10:40.48.Both girls were pressed by teammates, as Caroline Wagner (14) was fourth in the final 1,500-meter standings at 4:50.77. Lilah Lutes (14), meanwhile, was sixth in the 3,000 meters with a time of 11:05.63.
Other Big Green competitors had close calls as far as making it to the podium to accept a medal for their efforts. Cullinane produced a fourth-place finish in the 800-meter run in 2:21.02, as well as a 10th place finish in the javelin, following a toss of 823-09.
Tatum McInerney (13) placed fourth in the 400-meter dash in 59.91 and seventh in the 800-meter run at 2:25.30, as did the foursome of Michelle Kelly (15), Kemi Akande (15), Julia Fissore-O’Leary (15) and Cat Wyatt (14) with a time of 51.11. Wyatt also grabbed a fifth-place finish in the 100-meter dash at 12.68, a seventh-spot in the 200-meter dash standings at 26.61, and a sixth-place showing in the long jump at 16.5. Fissore-O’Leary finished just ahead of Wyatt in the long jump with a fifth-place showing, having cleared 16-9.5. Kayla Ali (14) was seventh in the discus with a toss of 91-1, while Zahra Rawji (15) hit 4-6 to place seventh in the high jump.