All State Division 1: Rising Star Richards Emerges As Champion !
Challenging course and conditions claimed many runners.
GARDNER - Bishop Feehan coach Bob L’Homme rarely (if ever) is at a loss for words when it comes time to talking about his athletes.
Saturday at the MIAA All State Finals was different. Saturday it was a little more difficult.
The end result of the Division I girls’ race on the hilly terrain of the Gardner Municipal Golf Course was a triumphant one for a young and talented sophomore from Lowell High named Kaley Richards. But the most surprising storyline was the runner that never made it to the finish line.
Feehan’s Abbie McNulty, the clear-cut favorite to snare the individual crown, was at her customary front-runner position before collapsing around the two-mile mark, apparently due to a lightning-fast pace that her legs simply couldn’t handle anymore. After about five minutes lying on the ground where she was catered to immediately, the senior was transported to an ambulance near the Shamrocks’ team area to receive further medical attention.
“I believe she is okay,” said L’Homme, shortly after the race. “It was just one of those things. She went out kind of hard. She tried to open it up just before the hill at the mile. Something like this has never happened to her. There is a first time for everything, I guess.”
The Stanford-bound McNulty, who committed to the Division I school just two days earlier, gave it her all in her final high school race on Massachusetts’ soil. She broke from the pack quickly on the first downhill portion, about a quarter mile from the start, and reached the one-mile mark at close to five minutes. She was nearly 25-seconds ahead of the chase pack that included junior Sydney Clary of Lincoln Sudbury, Needham sophomore Margie Cullen and Richards.
By the second mile, the fast pace and perhaps the unseasonably warm weather appeared to take its toll on McNulty, who won the Div. 2 state crown last year and has blazed to a 5K best of 17:08 this fall, a time far ahead of her closest rival.
“Things happen,” L’Homme said “It is what it is. It’s a good learning experience for everybody. Today is going to hurt and tomorrow is another day.”
Lowell’s Richards was one of several runners that were surprised at the sight of McNulty lying painfully on the course.
“I just think she is so phenomenal,” said the tenth-grader, while fighting back tears. “She collapsed and I just felt really bad. She is just so awesome.”
Just a week after winning the Eastern Mass. Div. 1 title, Richards claimed her latest and most important win of her young career with a time of 16 minutes, 54 seconds for the 2.9-mile course. Clary was second at 17:12 and Cullen placed third in 17:26.
Richards hung back between third and fourth at the beginning stages of the race and surged to the front by the second mile. She held that position to the finish.
“I felt the pressure coming from the girl behind me, but everyone said I kind of had a lead so I just stayed positive and kicked as much as I could,” she said. “I used all the energy I had left. It felt good. I am still kind of shocked, to be honest. I just wanted to do my best, but I didn’t think my best would get first place. It feels awesome."
On the strength of Cullen’s finish and the fifth-place effort of sophomore Sarah Armstrong (17:36), Needham captured the team title by defeating Lincoln-Sudbury, 83-109. Bishop Feehan was third with 126 points. Junior Kaleigh Hughes (17th, 17:56), senior Sammy Lerner (36th, 18:15) and sophomore Julianna Donovan (57th, 18:32) comprised the remaining scoring runners for the Rockets, which last week copped the EMass Div. 2 title.
Newton North senior Gabe Montague broke the tape in the boys’ Div. 1 race with a time of 14:27. He was comfortably ahead of senior Owen Gonser of King Philip, who placed second at 14:37. Lincoln Sudbury senior Joshua Kerber was third in 14:43, Newton North senior Mike Schlichting finished fourth with a time of 14:45 and Wellesley sophomore Thomas D’Anieri was fifth, also at 14:45.
Montague, who was third at last week’s EMass Div. 1 meet, a race won by Schlichting, was motivated somewhat by the media.
“(Most sites had predictions) for Mike to win or be second. Nobody had Gabe in there,” said Newton North coach James Blackburn. “As he was saying, one bad race and everybody falls off my bandwagon. That motivated him tremendously today. He just kept thinking how no one picked him and that just pushed him to run so great today.”
“That was in my head,” Montague admitted.” Even without the predictions having me not place in the top 10, I still was pretty determined going into this meet. I wanted to do well like every meet. I feel like, especially because I didn’t do so well last week, it kind of wakes up your system and asks, ‘Why am I doing this? Do I really want it?’ I decided I really wanted it. That really motivated me to do well today.”
In the team competition, Mansfield won its third title in the last six years by beating pre-race favorite Lowell, 105-134. Peabody was third with 134.
Mansfield coach Julie Collins, whose squad’s last crown came in 2008 at Franklin Park, realized she had a team that could compete at a high level back in late September when the Hornets took the hardware in the championship race of the Ocean State Invitational in Warwick, R.I., one of the top meets in the northeast.
“They start talking overly confident at the beginning of the season and we told them to kind of taper and take it one meet at a time,” Collins said. “After Ocean State, with Lexington and Shrewsbury there and beating those other strong Massachusetts’ teams, we stated thinking maybe we should have our eyes on the big prize.”
Mansfield’s first three runners finished within 11 seconds of each other. Junior Dan Romano was the Hornets’ top finisher, placing 12th overall with a time of 14:58. Junior teammate Mike Duggan was 15th (15:02) and senior Val Madonna-Lendvai was 22nd (15:09). Junior Andrew Simons was 42nd (15:27) and senior Alex Robbins was 64th (15:42) completed the scoring.
“I told our fifth, sixth and seventh guys, if you guys can be in the top seventy it would be great,” said Collins, whose team was a 45-point victor over Lincoln-Sudbury at last week’s EMass Div. 2 meet. “If we could get a low sixty out of one of those guys, that would be really outstanding. I felt like low sixties would get it done. I had our fifth guy, Alex Robbins, another awesome surprise for us this fall, at around sixtieth place.”
