TOPSHAM, Maine — Winning three consecutive championships is as monumental a task as you’ll find in sports, especially in an unpredictable one such as track and field.
For the Bangor High School girls, that accomplishment was all the sweeter given the challenges the Rams hurdled Saturday afternoon.
Coach Alan Mosca’s club overcame tough competition and brutal weather conditions to claim its third straight Class A championship at Mount Ararat High School, holding off Scarbrough 100 points to 80.25.
Portland finished third with 69.50 points, while Brewer’s 54.50 and Brunswick’s 47 rounded out the top five.
In a tight boys meet, Brunswick held off Falmouth by placing third in the 4×400 relay.
Coach Dan Dearing’s club finished with 76 points while the Navigators tallied 73.
Bonny Eagle finished third with 63, while Bangor accumulated 22 points to finish 12th.
Chilly winds and steady rain prompted Maine Principals Association officials to delay the meet for nearly two hours shortly after 1 p.m.
Officials had postponed the girls pole vault when the skies opened, but as the rain grew steadier, officials decided to pause the meet after the boys 100-meter dash finals.
Action resumed shortly before 3:30 p.m.
The meet marked the finales for two of the state’s most dignified track and field coaches.
Longtime Brewer coach Glendon Rand and veteran Mount Ararat coach Diane Fournier are both retiring from coaching at the end of the season.
Rand had coached the Witches cross country and spring track teams for more than three decades while Fournier has been a coach and official for nearly 50 years. Fournier was honored by the MPA and presented with a plaque.
While Connors was her usual outstanding self in sweeping the 100, 200 and 400-meter dashes and anchoring Bangor’s 4×400-meter relay team, it was the Rams’ depth that ultimately put them over the top.
Maddie Cyr and Callie Tennett earned fifth and seventh-place finishes in the 400 while Katie McCarthy and Abby Quinn went 4-6 in the discus for the Rams.
Bangor’s 4×800-meter relay team of Taylor King, Clara Oldenburg, Ava Pelkey and Katie McCarthy tabulated a fourth-place finish while McCarthy later finished 4th in the 800-meter run.
Abby Macdonald and Bridget Frazier contributed a 3-4 finish in the 1600-meter race walk for Bangor.
Scarborough kept the meet close throughout, but a 1-7 finish by the Rams’ Julia Bassi and Emma Mcneil in the shot put enabled Bangor to enter the 4×400 with an insurmountable cushion.
McCarthy, Maddie Cyr, Callie Tennett and Conners got the baton around the track in 4 minutes, 9.38 seconds, with the University of Connecticut-bound Conners anchoring.
Brewer freshman Easnadh Nobel-To’olo had herself an outstanding day, capturing gold in the long jump with a leap of 17 feet even.
Nobel-To’olo was also third in the triple jump, while teammate Lauren Vanidestine was second.
In the boys meet, Hampden Academy senior Charlie Collins, who will attend the University of Maine in the fall, posted a pair of impressive times on a brutal day for distance running.
Collins was second in the 1600 meters in 4:14.49 in a great duel with Maddox Jordan of Noble, who overtook Collins with 200 meters to go to break the tape in 4:12.72.
Collins endured a similar battle with Scarborough’s Adam Bendetson in the 3,200, but the University of Maine-bound Collins surged over the last half-mile to win in 9:12.99, good for a state record.
Brunswick’s 4×400 meter relay team entered the final event needing a sixth-place finish to enable no worse than a tie with Falmouth, but the Dragons’ quartet of Ethan Patterson, Miles Logan, Spencer Stadnicki and Luke Patterson ran to a third-place finish to seal it.
Brewer junior Colby Largay was the other local individual winner with a heave of 48 feet, 3.60 inches in the shot put.