Passaic Tech and Lakeland sweep Boverini Passaic Relays titles by Paul Schwartz of The Record
LITTLE FALLS — Passaic Tech and Lakeland’s boys extended their division winning streaks at the Doc Boverini Passaic County Relays at Passaic Valley High School to five straight and four straight, respectively Saturday.
But both teams can’t help wondering what would have happened if they had gone head-to-head for one title.
“Of course we would have loved to have had a chance to see if we could win against the best teams in A,” said Lakeland co-captain Michael McElroy after the Lancers captured the B Division title, 118-110 over Manchester. PCT beat Clifton, 96-89, for its fifth straight A Division title. “We love challenges and to go against the bigger schools would have been great.”
Lakeland had the day’s best finishes in the javelin, long jump and triple jump and would have clearly been in the mix for the overall title with PCT, Clifton and Wayne Valley with a strong and balanced team, led by McElroy and three other seniors, dubbed “the Core Four” by Lancer coach Damiano Conforti.
“With Michael, Kelvin Gonzalez, Patrick Keyser and Patrick Mullin, we’ve won four straight B division titles and I think we could have absolutely been in position to win an overall title,” said Conforti, who pointed to junior sprinter/jumper Hasson Klingeen as perhaps the athlete of the meet after his great legs on the 4-x-100 and 4-x-200 and a 20-8 1/2 long jump that was two feet better than any other jumper.
Passaic Tech would have a lot to say about that, even after getting disqualified in the day’s first event, the shuttle hurdles and being upset by Wayne Valley in the 4-x-100.
“I thought we had no chance of winning after the first few events,” said PCT boys coach Jeff Cioletti. “But the boys kept working and we got some great efforts from some new guys which put us in good spots.”
Cioletti pointed to junior Joel Ingram, who in his first season of track, led off the Bulldogs’ second place 4-x-400 team, which clinched the win and also had roles in taking second in the long jump and winning the triple jump. And the final two legs of the 4-x-1,600 run by sophs Tareq Abawi and Julius Pallero brought the Bulldogs from third to first in the next to last event and from three down to Clifton to three ahead going into the relay.
Passaic Tech won its first girls title since 2011 (three years before the meet was divided), defeating Clifton, 124-114, and Lakeland took a second straight B divisional title, 132-115 over Hawthorne.
Clifton was missing its (and perhaps Passaic County’s) best athlete, Alenys Morales, rested with a nagging injury and the loss showed in the jumps and hurdles, where the Bulldogs outscored the Mustangs, 46-14 in the five events. But PCT had its own hurdles to overcome in winning the A title.
“We really put it together as an overall team,” said PCT girls coach Tiffany Tookmanian. “We had a lot of younger kids step up in their first chance at the varsity level and helped us win both hurdles (Chariza Wilks and Tegann Anderson) and the javelin (freshman Destiny Fernandez) . Those weren’t events we expected to win.”
Ridgewood, Peralta excel in California
Passaic junior Luis Peralta skipped the Passaic Relays to take a shot at national level competition at the Arcadia Invitational just outside of Los Angeles and made it count with a spectacular wire-to-wire win in the open mile in 4:16.62 Saturday morning, third fastest in Passaic County history. The performance probably gets him into the Penn Relays mile to be held on April 27.
Ridgewood’s girls had two excellent performances as well, with the team of Virginia Morley, Victoria Purritano, Sara VandenAssem and Katherine Muccio running second in 1:04.53 in the Invitational Shuttle hurdles race Friday night. Morley and Muccio teammed with Meghan Adams and Evelyn Kotch to run a New Jersey seasonal best 9:25.26 for sixth in the 4-x-800 invitational, also on Friday night. The performances rank 5th and 13th on the all-time Bergen list. Will Baginski anchored the boys sprint medley to 6th place in the Invitational with a 1:54.7 800 split.