Ponies run at EMITL championship

    ORONO — The Foxcroft Academy girls indoor track and field team scored 26 points to place sixth out of 14 schools at the Penobscot Valley Conference/Eastern Maine Indoor Track League (EMITL) championship on Feb. 8 at the University of Maine.
    Leading the way for the Ponies was junior Fern Morrison, who finished second in a pair of events. Morrison had the day’s second best time in the 400 at 1 minute, 2.99 seconds. She also came in second in the 800 with a time of 2:35.05.

    Senior Abigail Mcleod had another second-place performance for Foxcroft. McLeod cleared 4 feet, 8 inches in the high jump for eight more Pony points.
    Two other Foxcroft athletes had sixth-place performances. Senior Liza Grigoryeva scored in the two-mile with a time of 13:23.25, and senior Mia Smith placed in the pole vault with a top height of 7-00.
    The Foxcroft boys earned six points to place 10th out of 14 teams. The Pony 4×800 relay accounted for four points with the meet’s fourth-fastest performance. Junior Noah Simpson and sophomores James Smith, Paul Birtwistle and Abraham Simpson combined to cover the approximate two miles in a time of 9:14.80.
    Junior Peter Boyer came in fifth in the shot put, as he had a top throw of 41-10.25.
    The girls from Bangor High School won the team title with a score of 85 points, ahead of second-place Hermon High School’s 72. Bangor won the EMITL crown for the fifth year in a row and ninth time in the last 11 seasons.
    Brewer High School senior Synclaire Tasker set a new conference mark in the 55 hurdles. Tasker ran the event in 8.47 seconds, besting the time of 8.52 seconds run by Bangor’s Grace MacLean in 2013.
    Hampden Academy won the boys’ championship with a score of 83 points, 18 more than the 65 for Bangor who had won eight of the previous 10 EMITL boys titles.
    Ellsworth High School senior Dan Curts set a new conference mark in the mile with a time of 4:16.38. Curts was over a second faster than the 4:17.66 run by Ellsworth’s Louie Luchini in 1999 to best what was one of the longest standing EMITL records.