Updated March 16
The Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School (MVRHS) 4×800 relay team set multiple school records this season, capping the season with a 20th place finish at the All-State Indoor Track championships last Saturday at the Reggie Lewis Center in Boston.
Juniors Yayla DeChiara and freshmen Eloise and Adrienne Christy — with a time of 10:19 — reset the MVRHS record they had set the week before while finishing with a best-ever second place in Division 5 competition. Senior captain Catherine Cherry replaced junior Sydney Brown who was away and helped the relay quartet to the second place finish.
The All-State competition format includes the top three winners in each division and the top nine teams from the state at large, regardless of division.
Senior sprinter Dash Christy, the only other Vineyarder All-State qualifier, was 20th in the state in the 55m hurdles.
The Vineyarder 4×800 team was the first in the history of the school to qualify for all-state competition in the 4×800 event. Their ascendancy came as the team dropped 15 seconds from their early-season times, a huge upswing in track time.
Their success presages continued strength in an event MVRHS has only competed in for three years in its sixth indoor track season. “Yeah, it was a good meet for us. I wish more of our kids were there, but we had a pretty good day,” track Coach Joe Schroeder said after the All-State meet.
The girls lowered their time by seconds from the divisionals the week before. “That’s a significant achievement,” he said, noting that the growing familiarity of his women runners with relay events followed a period in which the team hadn’t fielded a full field of relay squads. “For them to compete and qualify for the states, yes, that’s special,” he said.
“We didn’t have the numbers for several years until recently,” he said of a track team that has expanded from the low 20s to the mid-50s in size over the past three years, producing league, divisional, and state championships.
MVRHS track athletes now rest until spring track practice begins on March 16.
Updated to correct the MVRHS 20th place finish, Yayla DeChiara’s name, and Catherine Cherry’s run in the relay. — Ed.
