'Cats, Colts keep league title streaks alive
[caption id="attachment_613" align="alignleft" width="450" caption="The Hillsdale Academy girls track and field team capped off a perfect SCAA duel season with a winning performance at the league championship meet Tuesday."]
On an evening filled with youngsters turning heads and a high level of camaraderie among local kids, a pair of impressive championship streaks remained in tact.
The Hillsdale Academy girls track and field team won its fifth consecutive SCAA championship meet thanks in part to what head coach Mike Roberts calls “youthful enthusiasm” and Mike Burger’s Pittsford boy’s team won the SCAA championship meet for the sixth straight season, after finishing third in the SCAA D I in the duel meet season.
The Colts finished a stellar regular season with a 145.5-point effort, 37 points better than runner-up Battle Creek St. Phil and 46.5 points more than third-place Colon.
On the boys side, the Wildcats dominated the field events per usual and used quality depth to score 131 points. Runner-up Bellevue tallied 112 points and Hillsdale Academy came in third with 103.
For Robert’s girls, a league championship signifies their ability to overcome the loss of six key seniors form a year ago. Clara Leutheuser, Caitlyn Hubbard, Tera Woods and the Somerville sisters among others, were Colts of the past when the 2009 track season rolled around, and Roberts is pleased how well several different groups of girls gelled together.
"We had some youthful enthusiasm from the young group and just a lot of team depth and hard workers. We could spread our kids out pretty well this year,” he said. "We also had a blend of some experience that was around some of that success. There were some kids on (last year's) team with the great senior talent that got a taste of it and they were able to carry that part over, and they were our leaders."
For the Pittsford boys, the victory Tuesday was especially sweet because of how they faltered on several occasions during the duel meet season (3-2), only to come out on top when it mattered most.
[caption id="attachment_614" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="The Pittsford boys track and field team won its sixth straight SCAA league championship meet Tuesday."]
"I don't know if this team is as gifted on the track as some of the others I've had, but this team certainly sticks together well, they work hard everyday in practice and it's been amazing,” Burger said. “We were so focused tonight because we wanted it bad; sure a division title in the regular season would've been the frosting on the cake, but we think this meet is a true representative of our league and it was a goal and it was the biggest one."
Burger said it was a great feeling to be part of another championship squad, but without his predecessors such success might not even be possible.
