Written by Sandra Rivadeneira and David Lombardi
The Malden High’s Boys and Girls Indoor Track teams participated in the Last Chance to Qualify meet. This meet is held for the runners that are the top competitors in their events, making it their last chance to make it into the State tournament. The meet took place Sunday, February 4th at the Reggie Lewis Center in Boston.
Teams from many cities competed at the meet to try to make it to the State Tournament. Each city was only allotted a certain number of runners that were allowed to participate. Participants had to meet the time requirements in order to participate.
Some attendees were already state qualifiers, but most of the meet's participants were trying to either make states or improve their time to achieve a personal record. Senior hurdles runner Rachel Eaglin had already made States, but went on and broke the old Malden High 55 meter hurdles record, which was previously 9.05 seconds, with a time of 8.25 seconds.
Another Malden High record that was broken was the boys indoor 4 x 800 relay by a team composed of Seniors Eric Toh, Ameen Anwar, Oussama Ourich, and Sophomore Omar Asousy, with a time of eight minutes and twenty-five seconds. Junior Christopher D’entremont said “[The team’s] best events at the meet included the girls' mile, girls hurdle, boys' 4 x 800 relay, and other individual events.” Senior Jasmine Gray made States in the girls one mile.
Junior Kyle O'Brien attended the event in the hopes to break his personal record in the mile run like many other wanted to do with their respected events. He stated that "personally, [he did not] break five [minutes], but [he] did lower [his] time in the [boys] mile.” He continued to express how the “people cheering, the many [personal records] ran, and records were broken” were some of the highlights of Sunday’s meet.
Coach David Londino added on saying how he also views achievements, such as Senior Jasmine Gray’s success in completing the girl’s mile run in five minutes and thirty-one seconds, as things that “make it worth being [at the meet] for about seven hours on Super Bowl Sunday.”
“The team worked hard,” Londino said, stating that “it was great to see that everyone was able to push themselves.” Additional state qualifiers will be announced early next week and the State tournament will be held on the 16th. With the new times that the Malden girls and boys track team members have shown on Sunday will hopefully get more people on the state rosters.
The team seems to be pretty proud of what they have accomplished this past weekend. Some team members will be at the Reggie Lewis Center in Boston once again as they compete in the upcoming Northeastern Conference league meet.
