The WCA boys track and field team continued to excel at the Naugatuck Valley League championship meet on Wednesday at Naugatuck High School.
Coming off a 10-2 dual meet season, the Spartans ran, jumped and threw to their best-ever finish, third place, at the league competition. Naugatuck scored 132 points and completed a three-peat. Woodland was second with 98 points, but right behind it in third place was WCA with 93.
The Spartans have been working hard and building their program, and those efforts are paying off this season. The top eight finishers in each event score team points, and WCA did so on 18 different occasions. There were 15 individual top eight finishes, along with all three relays.
Victories earn the most team points, and junior Lucas Figueiredo was part of three of them. Figueiredo won the 200 (22.14 seconds) and 400-meter dashes (50.06), and he was the anchor leg of the winning 4×400 relay (3:32.09). The other three relay members were sophomore Mikael Isaacs, sophomore Will Mowrey and senior Alex Martinez.
Fellow junior Alex Figueiredo turned in three top eight finishes, claiming third in the high jump (6 feet); fourth in the triple jump (41 feet); and fifth in the long jump (19 feet, 9 inches).
Senior Aden Cross (7th in triple jump, 8th in long jump); junior Micah Chen (3rd in 100 meters, 8th in 200); junior Khristian Kennedy (4th in 100, 4th in 200); and sophomore Shawn Bigby (5th in high jump, 7th in long jump) each claimed a pair of top eight finishes. Senior Zyaire Ettson (2nd in 300 hurdles) and junior Chris Ndreko (7th in discus) turned in one top eight finish apiece.
WCA almost won two relays, but Derby won the 4×100 in a race that was decided by the thousandths of a second (both teams ran 43.62). The relay was made up of Chen, junior Julian Snead, Kennedy and Ettson. The 4×800 of senior Antonio Casiano, Martinez, Isaacs and Mowrey placed fifth.
The WCA girls also had an NVL champion, and that was senior Christianna Boyd, who won the long jump with a leap of 16 feet, 6.5 inches. Senior Jordyn Lavoie finished second in the javelin with a toss of 98 feet.
There were two other local winners, and both were seniors from St. Paul. Allison Barton won the 100 hurdles in 15.60 while Tyler Turner grabbed gold in the long jump at 21-6.
The top local girls team finish belonged to Kennedy, which placed sixth. The Eagles garnered a pair of silver medals. Sophomore Erica Austin took second in the 100 meters, and the 4×100 relay of Austin, senior Ariana Schofield, junior Jasmine Ogando and junior Kaianni Jones was also second (50.39). Of note, Kennedy’s 4×100 broke the meet record (50.43) – as did the winning team from Watertown (50.23) – set by Wilby in 2010.
GALLERY: Here are my photos from Wednesday’s NVL meet.
