Boonsboro Trio Piles Up Maryland State Track Championships
Maggie Sullivan of Boonsboro High School wins the Maryland State 2A Hurdles Championship – 5/24/14 … photo by Wayne Dutrow
Championships in large end-of-season track and field meets are the domain of elite athletes who can pile up a lot of points with dominant performances. When a team has several of these along with a good supporting cast of relay personnel, titles can be secured.
The Boonsboro High School girls track and field team followed this recipe for a second-place finish at the Maryland State Track Championships at Morgan State University in Baltimore last weekend. With three girls tallying 73.5 of the 83 team points, they actually came within two points of winning the state crown.
Maggie Sullivan, a senior hurdler and sprinter, scored 30.5 points for the Warriors. She won the 100 and 300 hurdles events, was a part of the winning 1600-meter relay, and took second in the 200-meter dash.
A pair of distance runners—Junior Meggan Grams and Sophomore Haley Wright—took first and second respectively in the 1600 and 3200-meter runs, while each also contributed a leg of the fifth-place 3200-meter relay. Grams also claimed an individual fourth in the 800-meter run, scoring a total of 26 points. Wright added another 17 points. The three girls together as a team would have placed third in the state!
The remainder of the total was scored by the other members of the two relays. On the state title 4×400 team with Sullivan were Malia Simpson, a freshman, and seniors Sarah Anderson and Lashanta Tonsil. Together they won by a mere .04 seconds over second-place Western Tech—a perennial Maryland track and field powerhouse team.
“It is great to have the three girls winning events,” said head coach Becky Walter. “But we needed the others on the team to get the points in the relays to take second place in the meet.”
Going into the final 1600-meter relay, Oakdale had an insurmountable 12-point lead and the state championship in their pockets. But Boonsboro trailed Western Tech by one point. They had to beat Tech to get the finalist’s trophy, and the .04 margin sealed it.
And at the beginning of the meet, Oakdale finished immediately ahead of Boonsboro by .63 seconds in the 3200 relay. A flip there could have led to a team tie, and so the meet simply could not have been any closer.
The final 2A state meet score was Oakdale 85, Boonsboro 83, Western Tech 82.
While Western Tech was typically dominant in the sprints and sprint relays, Oakdale was powered by three field championships from junior Jackie McNulty in the pole vault, long jump, and triple jump. Oakdale would tally 58 of their 85 points in field events, including a 1-3-5 finish in the triple jump.
Both Maggie Sullivan and Meggan Grams set new 2A state records. Sullivan’s 43.39 in the 300 hurdles took down a 25-year-old mark of Indira Hamilton of Central of PG by .05 seconds. Grams’ 10:55.95 in the 3200 bettered a 32-year-old record of 10:56.3 by Carolyn Forde of Atholton.
For more descriptions and a series of great photos of the athletes discussed, click through the slides to follow …