Amidst a huge crowd on a beautiful May Saturday, Andover’s track team emerged first for girls and second for boys at the New England Prep School Track Association Division 1 Track and Field Championships, despite facing its fiercest competition yet. The impressive finishes at Interschols continued the girls’ undefeated season for the girls, while ending the boys’ streak. For the second year in a row, Andover hosted Interschols, allowing the team to run on its home track. “I’ve had this date circled on my calendar since November 12, the first day of indoor track,” said Coach Corbin Lang. “Interschols is all about the team, our team.” This in no way made the successes easy, though. Coach Dave Callum scored the meet based on seed times for each athlete, and came up with the Hotchkiss’s girls’ team winning by eight points before the meeting, but in the end Andover won by almost 30. Andover knew going into the meet that Hotchkiss was its biggest competition for the championship. Captain Annie McDonough ’09 said, “We all knew it was going to be a very tight meet between us and Hotchkiss, and everyone on the team gave their absolute best for the win.” Although both the boys’ and girls’ team were very successful, neither had many people win their individual events. The entire team contributed to the outcome. “We didn’t have one star like Hotchkiss had,” said McDonough. “Instead, it was completely a team effort, and our athletes placed in 16 out of 17 events. Andover only had one individual champion for the girls’ team, Catherine Coppinger ’09 in the 400. Another strong performance for the girls’ team came from Cayla Hatton ’12. She ran in the 800 and 1500, but in both she raced down to the finish line and lost by less than half of a second to Exeter Lower Katrina Cougan, who scored almost half of the points for her team. For the boys team, Malin Adams ’09 scored several points for the boys’ team by winning the pole vault. Adams’ victory was so impressive because there were two vaulters seeded ahead of him from Loomis Chaffee. He went into the meet as a huge underdog but came out on top. Malcolm Mason-Rodriguez ’11 also performed well for Andover. The newest member to the track team easily won the long jump and triple jump by considerable margins. Peter Hetzler ’10 won the 400, an event that he has dominated in all season. With such great a great performance, Andover’s track team will hopefully be able to complete their tremendous accomplishments with a win over Exeter at the annual Andover-Exeter track meet this Saturday.
