The second test of the season for the Andover Girls track team came on Thursday as they faced off against a talented Reading High School squad. Opening the meet, the 4×100 relay team, minus Dwyer, lost by just over a second to an impressive Reading team. Captain Lissy Robie ’04, the only runner for Andover in the 1500m, scored a win against a horde of Reading runners improving her time steadily to 5:06. Robie and Ali Holliday ’06, a recent transfer to the distance team, represented Andover in the 800m. They combined for second and third places just slightly behind reading’s best runner with Robie crossing in 2:29 and Holliday, running her first 800m for the Big Blue, finishing in 2:32. Andover dominated in the 3000m, the event where they scored the most points. With a late surge, Abby King ’07 took the victory with a time of 12:12 with Debbie Kuhn ’05 followed suit, just 7 seconds behind. Cassie Tognoni ’05 scored in both the 100m Hurdles and the 300m Hurdles, nailing down several points for the team. In the 100m Hurdles Marty Schnure ’06, was unable to finish the race, and thus unable to score, due to an unfortunate misstep, leaving Tognoni to take third behind two talented Reading hurdlers. Without Schnure in the 300m Hurdles, Tognoni was still able to anchor down 3 points for the Big Blue finishing second. Annie Wilkin ’05 and Sonia DeYoung ’05 placed second and third in both the 100m and the 200m, respectively. In the 100m Wilkin’s time of 13.5 seconds and DeYoung’s time of 13.8 seconds were slightly slower than their performances at Taft; attributed to the unruly headwinds that the competitors faced. The 200m saw Wilkin and DeYoung again taking second and third with times of 28.4 and 29.3, respectively. After Reading completed a sweep of the 400m, Tognoni tied for first place in the high jump with a leap of 4’10”, a mark slightly lower than last week’s new personal record. Long-jump star Colleen Thurman ’07 scored a crucial first place for Andover, out-leaping her nearest opponent by almost a foot and clearing the former freshman record by over four inches. Thurman carried her long jump success into the triple jump where she marked a distance of 30’5”, which was good enough for third place, and merely an inch from second place. Johanna Marmolejos ’04 earned second place in the Javelin with a distance of 83’4”. By the beginning of the 4×400 relay, the outcome of the meet had already been decided, but Sarah Linnemann ’06, Hillary Fischer-Groban ’05, Holliday, and Becca Howe ’06 put in a respectable performance and finished within seven seconds of their Reading competitors.
