Bangor’s Cameron Stadium will host the Class A state championship track and field meet Saturday for the first time in more than two decades.
And as much as athletes from the state’s largest high schools are looking forward to testing themselves on the new eight-lane track and adjacent field-event areas, the fastest person in the stadium may not be one of the participants.
That honor may go to longtime Bangor High School athletic administrator Steve Vanidestine, who is charged with monitoring the event to troubleshoot and ensure that nothing that would preclude a smooth-running meet has been forgotten.
“I’ll be like a chicken with my head cut off running around checking everything at first, but hopefully I’ll be able to relax and watch [the meet],” he said.
The Class A event is one of three state track championship meets to be held around the state beginning at 10 a.m. Saturday, with the Class B competition set for Mount Desert Island High School in Bar Harbor and the Class C athletes to convene at Lewiston High School.
Bangor’s Cameron Stadium was a regular host of state-level interscholastic track meets for many years after its grandstand was constructed in 1944.
But as the decades went by the facility’s track and grandstand began to deteriorate, and by the late ’90s the existing six-lane track was not suitable for regional and state competition.
A plan to renovate the stadium was announced in 2010, and during the next decade a three-stage, $5 million project featured the replacement of the main grandstand and the installation of a state-of-of-the-art eight-lane track and an artificial-turf field and construction of on-site locker room facilities.
The newly completed Cameron Stadium began hosting events on the turf last fall and crowned its first state champion in November, when Foxcroft Academy of Dover-Foxcroft edged Winthrop/Monmouth Academy/Hall-Dale 19-16 to win the Class D football title.
Bangor’s request to host the 2022 Class A track and field state championships as a capstone to the inaugural year of the new Cameron Stadium was approved by the Maine Principals’ Association, leaving Vanidestine to lead the effort to make sure the stadium was ready to host that event this spring.
One major step came last Saturday when Cameron Stadium hosted the Penobscot Valley Conference large-school track championships, a meet that doubled as a dress rehearsal of sorts for Bangor’s effort to host the state meet a week later.
“It was essential, because when we asked the MPA to consider us as a site for the Class A state track championship, we also asked the PVC if we could host that meet because it would be a great chance for us to have a trial run with a big meet,” Vanidestine said.
“There were several things that we took note of and improved, and we’ll continually try to keep making things better as we go.”
Bangor High School is the defending Class A girls outdoor track champion as well as the two-time reigning Class A indoor track state champion, and coach Alan Mosca’s girls squad looms as one of the title favorites again this year.
One of Bangor’s primary recent challengers both indoors and outdoors has been Gorham, and Saturday’s title hunt is expected to be another battle between the two like-nicknamed Rams.
Bangor is led by junior sprinter Anna Connors, who set a state record while winning the 200 at last year’s state meet with a time of 24.51 seconds. She also eclipsed the old state mark with a time of 12.11 seconds in the 100 while finishing second in that event to Victoria Bossong of Cheverus High School in Portland, who was timed in 11.81.
Connors placed second in the 400 at the 2021 state meet behind Bossong — now running at Harvard — and she’ll be one of the favorites in all three sprints this year as she is ranked first in the 400 and second in both the 100 and 200 behind Gorham senior Emma Green.
Bangor also features a top distance runner in senior Megan Randall, while Gorham’s point production will be aided by senior Alyvia Caruso, the top seed in the triple jump and long jump and second in the 100 hurdles.
Two-time defending state champion Scarborough is favored to retain the Class A boys title, led by senior Jayden Flaker, top-seeded in the 110 hurdles as well as the anchor of the Red Storm’s No. 1-seeded 4×100 relay team. Flaker also is ranked second in the 300 hurdles and is part of a third-seeded 4×400 relay tandem.
The boys’ meet also may feature an assault on state records for the 100-meter dash. Flaker holds the overall state mark at 10.71 seconds, but he won’t be in the field that will be vying for the Class A state-meet record of 10.80 seconds set a year ago by Aidan Walcott of Bonny Eagle High School in Standish.
Walcott is the top-seeded runner in this year’s state field after running a 10.73 at last weekend’s Southwestern Maine Activities Association championships held at Falmouth High School.
He’ll be challenged by Gorham’s Andrew Farr, who ran a 10.74 in the same race, and Frank Morang of Cheverus High School in Portland, who finished third in 10.83.
Whether any of the three will be able to best either record at Cameron Stadium remains to be seen, in part because Vanidestine expects whatever wind that develops by race time for the boys 100-meter final at 12:45 p.m. to be coming from the south, which means the sprinters could be running into a headwind.
But whether state records are broken or not this weekend, Vanidestine sees the chance to host Saturday’s Class A meet is an opportunity a decade in the making and just one of many uses for a stadium designed to accommodate multiple sports as well as other, less competitive uses.
“To see the kids competing on that track and be proud of their facility has meant everything,” he said, “and even in the off hours you’ll see people from the community park in the lot on Mount Hope [Avenue] and walk down and walk or do their runs.
“This is really great for the community — especially for the school-age children — but it’s also a great opportunity for the city to host events like this and we’re grateful for that opportunity.”
