LAKE ORION BOYS, OXFORD GIRLS CLAIM OAA RED/WHITE CROWN
Through all the crappy weather earlier this season, these are the days the coaches kept telling their athletes were coming.
Days like Friday are the ones that make it all worth it, when all those struggles finally fall away, and teams start popping personal records left and right on the track.
Both Lake Orion boys and Oxford girls used a boatload of personal-best performances to take home team titles at Friday’s OAA Red/White championship meet at the Wildcats’ home field.
For the Dragons, it was the 10th straight league title, and the last in the illustrious career of longtime coach Stan Ford, who’s retiring at the end of the season.
“That’s what I’ve been telling them. You guys work hard in the crappy weather, and then when it does fall into place, all of a sudden, we’re getting PRs like crazy,” Ford said. “It’s what makes it worthwhile because there are kids that aren’t here today, because they didn’t stick with it. They’re never gonna they got tired of the bad weather and they just quit and everything else was you’re missing your opportunity to do a piece have appear. So we’ve tried to tell him that every bad meet we add, stay with it, stay with it, because it’ll happen. It’ll come you just got to keep working and be patient and
good things will happen.”
The Dragons finished 23.5 points ahead of second-place Adams, despite the Highlanders finishing the meet with a recordsetting run in the 4×400 relay, that broke the OAA Red meet record set by Pontiac Northern in 1995, and matched by the Huskies again two years later.
The Lake Orion boys racked up 152.5 points, followed by Adams (129), Clarkston (60), Oxford (52) and Rochester (50.5) rounding out the top five on the boys side.
Fourth last year, the Oxford girls took home this year’s team title with 134 points, 49 points ahead of Rochester Adams — the defending girls champion — in second place. Troy was third with 76 points, Lake Orion
fourth (75) and Rochester fifth (68).
“I guess, on the girls side, I was — I was hoping to win. And then down on paper, I felt like seed wise, that we were in a really good spot,” Oxford coach Brian Drobnich said. “And we’ve had a really cold spring. So to actually have some good sprinting weather to get some PRs — I was hoping that it was the heat wasn’t gonna be a factor. So it worked out really well. And some of the kids did really surprise me with performances. So it was it was somewhat expected, but it was good.”
The coach was actually hoping his Wildcats hadn’t missed out on the start of the good weather last weekend, when most other teams ran someplace. “Last weekend, most of our kids didn’t race because we had prom. And then I looked at the results, and I saw all the other schools finally dropped time. And I was like, ‘Oh, shoot. I hope we didn’t miss the party,’” Drobnich said “Early May is always, it’s always a good time. And we’re really looking forward to regionals next Friday.”
On the girls side, the Wildcats piled up points in the field events.
Eriana Hubbard, Caprice Fields and Elizabeth Rice went 1-2-3 in the shot put (37-3, 32-9.5 and 32-4), while Hubbard threw a PR of 132-7 to win the discus. Payton Fitzpatrick won the long jump with a 16-3, a half-inch further than second-place Carsey Collins of Clarkston.
Lake Orion’s Alayna Tisch won the 100 (12.99) and ran the anchor leg of the Dragons’ winning 4×100 (51.23) and 4×200 (1:47.64) relays, while Bella Monterosso won the pole vault (10-8).
Bloomfield Hills’ Gabrielle Jeffries won the 200 (25.68) and 400 (58.41), while teammate Kate Jenkins won the 800 (2:24.32)
Clarkston’s