Hanover
But Saturday afternoon’s girls 600-meter run at the 48th annual Dartmouth Relays at Leverone Field House was another beast entirely for the Raiders’ most experienced and celebrated track athlete.
Audrey Jackson, a senior from Montreal’s Ecole Chomedey-De Maisonneuve High School, was the 600’s top seed, leaving Kennedy — for once — looking up pre-race to her competition.
The result was a battle-of-the-border rendition that left Kennedy not only victorious. but with a meet record time to her name.
Kennedy — committed to run for Cornell University next season — finished the race in 1 minute, 34.85 seconds, beating Jackson by 2.44 seconds for the Dartmouth Relay record, set by Barrington, R.I. native Abby Livingston in 2014, by 0.02. She also won the girls 55 meter hurdles, placed second in the girls high jump and helped the Raiders finish eighth (1:52.10) in the girls 4×200 meter relay.
To anyone else, the win would have just been another to accomplishment for Kennedy to add to an already crowded trophy case. But Saturday’s run was different.
“Going into the race, I’ve only run 600s with no competition,” Kennedy said, still out of breath and sitting hunched over in the center of Leverone’s track. “I didn’t know how to pace, then I usually had very little motivation in the last laps. So coming in, I said, ‘Oh man, this girl must be something else.’ My strategy was to just pace off of her for the first two laps, though I don’t know how to pace, and then just pass her in the last lap.”
Kennedy and Jackson jumped ahead of the seven-runner pack just after the race’s first turn with the Canadian, in her neon yellow socks and shorts, holding a slight lead. Kennedy’s early goal was to keep pace, she said, not wanting Jackson to get out of reach.
“I noticed going into the second lap like, ‘This is a really fast pace,’ ” Kennedy said. “It like, ‘Oh man, I have to keep up with her.’ There were a few times where I got a bit wobbly like, ‘Oh gosh, I’m falling behind.’ ”
For two laps, Kennedy stayed a step behind Jackson just inside the first lane, letting Jackson dictate the pace. As the pair passed the scorer’s table for the final time, something changed. Jackson, normally a 400-meter runner in her first 600 of the winter season, felt her legs gave way and watched Kennedy shoot past her.
“My legs were done,” Jackson said. “In that turn. … The 600, that usually happens.”
What doesn’t happen as often is an experienced opponent on her tail with a little bit left in the tank.
“It was more or less what we expected, more or less what we talked about,” said Kevin Lozeau, Lebanon’s fourth-year head coach. “Get out hard, hopefully not having the lead, let someone else take the pace and just sit.
“We’ve never seen her tie up like that before,” he added. “Maybe because it’s a longer race than she’s used to running, but she absolutely laid it all out.”
“I just want to leave behind good memories of this team,” Kennedy said of her of her final few months of varsity track with the Raiders. “My goal is to just have fun, work hard and hopefully good things come out of it. This is my family, I just want to enjoy the time I have left with them.”
Lebanon’s girls team finished in fifth with 30 points among more than 130 high schools from nine states and Canada, assisted heavily by Kennedy’s 28 points. Overall, Lozeau was pleased with his team’s performance and the continued development of his top runner.
“I’ve got to be straight up, Corinne scores most of the points for us,” he said. “It really just goes to show how well she does stack up, not just the 600 but the hurdles. … Just in general, it showed everyone else, and maybe proved a little bit more to herself, that she’s that caliber.
“I can honestly say, so far so good,” Lozeau added.
In all, four meet records were shattered in Saturday’s high school leg of the three-day event, the third of which will conclude with collegiate competition today in Hanover. They were the most records broken in a single day since five events saw meet records broken in 2007.
Sammy Watson (Rush-Henrietta, N.Y.), showing unprecedented range for a high school athlete, competed in the girls 400 meter dash and girls one mile run. She won both, breaking the meet’s 400 record by 0.04 seconds and earning an invitation to the New Balance Indoor Grand Prix on Jan. 28 at the Reggie Lewis Center in Boston.
David Principe, from La Salle Academy (R.I.), broke the boys 1,000-meter record by 3.65 seconds. Leya Salis, from Bedford, N.H., broke the girls 1,000-meter record by more than two seconds.
“I think it shows that we have a great facility,” said Dartmouth track and field head coach Barry Harwick, one of the relay’s primary architects. “High school teams come to a big meet, they get excited for being here and excited athletes produce record performances.”
Saturday’s event was also a springboard for some of the Upper Valley’s up-and-coming track athletes.
Hartford High, in particular, displayed a glimpse at its bright future as sophomore Abayomi Lowe placed 10th in the crowded boys 300 meters and ninth in the boys 55.
Hanover freshman Kyle Doucette took 12th in the boys 400 in 54.81 seconds. Lebanon sophomore Ryan Sullivan took eighth in the boys high jump at 20 feet, 00.50 inches and Raiders junior Kath Merchant took fifth in the girls shot put at 37-09.26 feet. Oxbow’s Jon Puffer tied Chris Wagner (Broadalbin-Perth, N.Y.), for seventh place in the boys pole vault, reaching 12.5 feet.
Harwick said his team has been counting down to the relays’ 50th anniversary and said there are still things he’d like to see as the Big Green track team’s marquee event turns half a century old.
“We want to make sure the meet continues to be successful,” he said. “I’d like to grow the Sunday portion of the event. Friday and Saturday, they’re about as big as we can handle. Two thousand high school kids, that kind of maxes out everything here. … And another idea we’re toying around with is naming the individual events of the meet for some of the prestigious people who have been here before. … That’s something I think the college is also in favor of. A lot of the coaching positions for now are endowed to people; I think that’d be relatively easy to do.”
Josh Weinreb can be reached at jweinreb@vnews.com or 603-727-3306.