SK Rebels Take Southern Division In Girls Track

NORTH KINGSTOWN—The South Kingstown High girls’ outdoor track team remained undefeated with its victory at the Southern Division Championships on a blustery Tuesday at North Kingstown High School.

“We were surprised, because we thought that before the meet that North Kingstown and East Greenwich were going to be close to us,”  South Kingstown head coach Gerald Lynch said.

“I told the girls that even though you had a perfect league season, big meets are a whole different story because there are so many more points up for grabs.”

The Rebels won the event with 143 points, followed by Coventry High in second with 82 points and both East Greenwich and Chariho Highs in third with 73 points apiece. 

The host Skippers took fifth with 63 points, Westerly High was sixth with 41 points and The Prout School took seventh with 36 points.

Narragansett, Exeter-West Greenwich and West Warwick Highs rounded out the bottom three with 35.5, 26 and 15.5 points, respectively.  

While half of the schools will be competing in class championships in the following few weeks, each of the schools will be gearing up in the coming weeks for the Rhode Island State Championships Saturday, June 3rd beginning at 12 p.m. at Brown University.

For the Southern meet itself, here is how each of South County’s Schools fared:

SOUTH KINGSTOWN HIGH

For the undefeated Rebels, Tuesday’s meet was obviously another good meet in a season that has been full of them.

South Kingstown rolled to the championship by 61 points despite only winning six of the 19 events, utilizing their depth to bring home the title. 

The Rebels simply occupied more of the top six spots per event than any other team, grabbing 25 of a possible 114 places in the top six. 

For example, Chariho took home six first place finishes, the same as South Kingstown, but only had 11 finishes in the top six. 

“We knew our top girl in each event was going to do well, but it was the second and third girls in their events coming up and getting a sixth, or a fifth or a fourth that made the meet much easier for us,” Lynch said. 

The Rebels did major damage in the 1500 meter run, totaling 20 points thanks to a first place finish from freshman Kelly Reiss, a second from junior Paige Ethier and a sixth from freshman Sydney Sweck.

Sophomore Kendall Feaster was the top scorer for South Kingstown with 24 points, taking first in the 800 meter run, first as a member of the 4X800 meter relay team and fourth as a member of the 4X400 meter relay team.

“It was very cold and I was worried I wouldn’t do well, but after the four by eight it felt good,” Feaster said.  “The team is really competitive, but we’re also really supportive of each other.”

Feaster teamed with freshman Lily McCaughey, freshman Malia Erickson and junior Liz Congdon to take the 4X800 in a time of 10:18.20.

Junior Juliana Cardarelli and Jennifer Phillips also took home first place finishes for South Kingstown, winning the 100 meter hurdles and discus throw, respectively.  Senior Jenna Collins was tops in the high jump with a leap of 4-11.

The Rebels will compete in the Class B Championships Saturday beginning at 10 a.m. at Westerly High School in its final tune up for states.

“We’ve been preparing for the big meets now, we’ve got the class meet coming up and that’s going to be a meet that’s winnable for them too,” Lynch said. 

“We probably have the depth in the states, but we can make some noise, we’ll some girls in the top three in some of the events and that’s exciting.”

NORTH KINGSTOWN HIGH

While it may have been a great meet for South Kingstown, it was certainly a tough afternoon for North Kingstown.

The Skippers, who entered with just one loss in the first meet of the year against South, were hampered by injuries, absenteeism and plain old tough luck.

“We were missing some really key competitors today,” North Kingstown head coach Jennifer Chabot said.  “I was hoping for top three, fifth place makes sense because we had five of our six scorers out because of illness or injury.”

The toughest race of the day for North had to be the 100 meter hurdles.

Freshman Maria Bolibruch, one of the top hurdlers in the state despite her young age, qualified for the 100 hurdles first with a time of 17.60.

In the finals Bolibruch was out in front again by a solid margin, but caught the second to last hurdle and fell, allowing South’s Juliana Cardarelli to slide in for the win.

“I said to her that at least it wasn’t the state meet, you’ve got that out of your system now,” Chabot said.  “Unfortunately it was the divisional meet, and she was pretty bummed out about that.”

There were some bright spots on the day for the Skippers, the brightest of which being sophomore Aisha McAdams performance in the 3000 meters.  McAdams won the event in 10:44.20, 20 seconds faster than second-place finisher Paige Ethier of South Kingstown.

“I just wanted to go out today, be conservative, pace myself and see where things happened from there,” McAdams said.  “You have to mentally be there, you have to push yourself and want to go hard.  If that’s not happening then you not going to do as well as you’ve pushed yourself towards.”

McAdams was able to win the race despite still recovering from an ankle injury suffered earlier in the season.

“Aisha is the top in Rhode Island right now, she’s coming back from an injury and we’ve been taking it very slowly right now,” Chabot said.  “From her time today you would never know that this kid is hurt.”

Despite the tough meet the Skippers will still be in good shape for states, and even better shape in the years to come given their great deal of youth.

“We have a crazy talented freshman class and they’re all sprinters, which is huge.  You can’t make a sprinter a distance runner, but you can’t make a distance runner a sprinter,” Chabot said.  “You either have it or you don’t and these kids have it.”

THE PROUT SCHOOL

The Crusaders were led by the well-rounded performance of sophomore Karly Gregory, who accounted for half of Prout’s 36 points.

“Karly is a very good all-around athlete, what we really need to do now is pick an event,” Prout head coach Mark Skinkle said.  “She did really well.”

Gregory took second in the 200 meter dash, second in the long jump and fifth as a member of the 4X400 meter relay team. 

Sophomore Kelley Magill, junior Amelia Bradley and sophomore Sienna Carraccio combined with Gregory for a time of 4:35.50 in the 4X400, while Jessica Elliott grabbed a fourth place finish in the 3000 meter run and sophomore Erin Viera took fourth in the discus.

“She [Elliott] is the gem of the day, her PR [personal record] this season was 11:44, and she ran 11:17 into the wind today,” Skinkle said.  “That was just a super race for her.”

“They did very good today, especially with the wind conditions we had, I’m impressed with them,” Skinkle said.   “We had some very good performances overall.”

NARRAGANSETT HIGH

The highlight of the meet for the Mariners came in the hammer throw, with freshman Leia Mistowski winning the even with a toss of 126-04 and sophomore Gabriella Smith taking second by just one inch over Chariho’s Katerina Irwin.

“Really it’s been a team effort from the weights to the jumps to the sprints to the running everyone’s done an excellent job,” Narragansett head coach Robert Shields said.

“Our hammer throwers Leah Mistowski and Gabby Smith went one-two which was excellent, we had a good showing in the 100 meter hurdles and Morgan Pelky did an excellent job as well.”

Narragansett, despite being one of the smallest teams in the meet, held their own.  Freshman Alicia Perry took second in the 100 meter hurdles with a time of 17.70, while senior Morgan Pelkey’s leap of 4-07 in the high jump was good enough for third place.

“The girls are doing an excellent job, they’re really sticking to what we’ve worked on in practice and focusing on running their races,” Shields said.  “We tell the girls that if you run your own race that you will have success, you will be fine.”

The Mariners will be back in action Saturday at 10 a.m. for the Class C Championships at Ponaganset High School.