Calhoun earns first spring county title

Calhoun’s girls’ track and field team was finally able to slay the Valley Stream North dragon on its home turf to capture the program’s first-ever spring county title during the Nassau Class AA Championships May 21.

Following their seventh straight conference championship that pushed their meet winning streak to 103, the Colts earned 60 of their 94 points in the field events – including a sweep in the triple jump and three of the top four spots in the long jump – to win the county title. Calhoun finished almost 17 points ahead of the runner-up Spartans after finishing second to North in the last two spring championship events.

“The past few years we finished runner up, runner up. It was really hard,” Calhoun coach Joe Migliano said. “We had a really good group of kids last year and when we lost, I remember just talking to them on the bus and I wanted them to remember what it was like. We [beat the Spartans] in the winter and all we heard was, ‘We can’t do it in the spring too,’ and we just used that the whole time.”

Sophia Hines’s jump of 38 feet, four inches on her second triple jump attempt held up for the win, while Yolina Bastien finished second with a leap of 36-01.50. Danielle Lawrence came through with a jump of 35-07.25 on her last try to complete the senior trifecta.

“We refer to those three as our Big 3,” Migliano said. “We knew coming in that Sophia was going to win. [Yolina] was easing up a little bit and was a little nervous about fouling and then once she got a decent jump we told her go for it and she hit another [personal record]. Dani has so much more potential in her and she PR’d too at 35-7.”

Hines became a two-time county champion after posting her second 17-02.25 long jump try of the final. Bastien was third after reaching 17-01 on her final try and junior Lauren Rosario had a pair of 16-02.25 leaps to solidify fourth.

Junior Dana Wauchope finished third in the discus and fourth in the shot put and Rosario placed third in the high jump after recording 98-05 on her final toss.

Lawrence also had a season-best sprint of 12.35 seconds to finish third in the 100-meter dash and bested two of the three Valley Stream North runners in the 100-meter hurdles final for a pivotal third-place finish.

“We really focused on it the past two or three weeks,” Migliano said. “She trained the technique, and she ran a good semis and the Valley Stream North girl hit a hurdle in the finals and Dani just kept moving. Dani was supposed to finish fourth. That’s a 10-point swing.”

Junior Kaitlyn Stibritz was the runner-up in the 2000-meter steeplechase, about 16 seconds better than fourth-place teammate Sophia Delcid, and fourth in the 3,000-meter run. The 4X800 relay team of freshman Kristin Higgins, Delcid, Stibritz and sophomore Jamie Menninger-Low was fourth in that final.