PRESS RELEASE

May 26, 2018

Division 3 Championships

North Reading

Nauset Seniors Finish Season in Style

At Saturday’s Division 3 State Championship in North Reading four Nauset seniors made the most of their final meet by garnering high placements and school records. Brian Brooks, Dyllon McNeil, Owen Wilcox and Jake Whitfield knew it would be their final meet wearing the black and gold “N” on their singlets. Whether they qualified for the MIAA All-State Championship in Fitchburg next Saturday afternoon would be a moot point. The championship meet conflicts with the senior prom, which they will all be attending. What made things even more difficult was that most years the All-State Meet starts in the morning, allowing athletes to compete and then get back for a night event. This year the meet doesn’t start until 3:00 PM and is hours away.

Nauset scored 22 points during the meet for a 12th place finish among the 37 teams that had point scorers. In a meet that was stifling hot, Brian Brooks started off the excitement by placing 3rd in the mile (4:30.59), an event he entered ranked 5th. In the same race Jacob Pearl placed 8th (4:39.19) and Jake Whitfield placed 21st (5:02.08).

Dyllon McNeill ran his two fastest races of the year in the 100M dash. McNeill ran 11.31 in the semis and 11.32 in the finals to also place 3rd. Owen Wilcox entered the 200M semis ranked 16th and ended up placing 9th overall posting a 23.45 time - missing the finals by one position.

Willcox then became one of Nauset’s stars of the day by running back to back record setting relays. In the 4X100M relay he joined with McNeill, sophomore Shavar Champagne and freshman Richard Ramsey to place 4th. Their time of 44.03 broke the record they set two weeks ago at the State Coaches Invitational of 44.23. McNeill ran an inspired anchor leg, running down two other teams and helping to make up for a poor handoff that occurred earlier in the race.

Then Wilcox joined with Brooks, Pearl and Whitfield to place 8th in the 4X400M relay at 3:36.64 to improbably tie the school record set over 20 years ago and also tied by the group of Brooks, Wilcox, Pearl and Nolan Ellard just last Monday. Brooks had an outstanding anchor leg of 52.75 to edge 9th place Bishop Feehan by 3/10ths of a second. What made this incredibly improbable is that the original record and that of last Friday were hand-timed, but this mark was electronically timed, which means it is accurate to the 100th of a second. The hand-timed record is 3:36.4. The conversion of an electronic timed race to hand-timed is to subtract exactly .24 seconds. If the electronic finish had been .01 faster they would have now held the record outright. If they had run .01 slower they would have missed the record by a margin unrecognizable to the eye. That is what made this sop improbable.

Nauset had two more placements on the day. Matt Cahill was 7th in the high jump at 6’0”, the only Warrior field event athlete; boy or girl, to qualify for the divisional meet.  Junior Tyreese Ferguson entered the meet seeded 10th in hurdles but placed 8th in a time of 15.81.

As to the seniors, Coach Estey was philosophical about the predicament faced by the athletes. “This time of year is especially difficult for seniors. With conflicts of proms and graduations, many athletes have to make hard choices. In this case I have four boys who have been 100% committed to their athletic careers and their team. Three of them have qualified to compete next week and desire to, but due to unforeseen conflict cannot. I respect both them and their decisions.”