Track Excels at Hunt Relays Meet

Big Red’s track team flourished in the Hunt Relays Meet this Saturday, coming back with a second place finish among many strong prep schools including Cushing, Northfield Mount Hermon and Andover. The meet, held at Deerfield, was unique in the sense that all the running races were relays. Even the throws and jumps were as a team,  rather than individually, allowing Exeter to showcase its depth.

The events included the 4x100m, 4x200m, 4x400m, distance medley relay, 4x800m, long jump relay, high jump relay, shot put relay, javelin relay, discus relay, high hurdle shuttle and low hurdle shuttle. This meet was a great way for Exeter to feel out the competition from multiple schools, seeing that most meets only showcase one or two teams’ abilities.

“It gave us a better idea of what to expect going into Interschols and E/a,” upper Garrett Pitt said.

“We are just eager to move forward and to keep progressing.”

Big Red had mixed performances, with the sprint and field events producing better results than on the distance side.

On the sprinting side, the 4x200m and 4x100m relay placed in first. Co-captain and senior Vincent Vaughns, the last leg of the 4x200m relay, ran an impressive time of 21.1 seconds, coming from 10 meters behind the first place team to win by 40 meters. The same scenario occurred in the 4x100m relay, when Vaughns came back from behind to secure the win.

The girls’ long jump relay broke the meet record by a solid six feet, scoring the team a number of valuable points.

On the distance side, the team struggled due to the intense increase in mileage at practice during the past couple of weeks. On top of that, Andover and NMH both fielded some of their strongest runners in the DMR and 4x800.

“It was a difficult meet all around, and we were tired,” Pitt said. “In the upcoming weeks, we are going to start dropping the mileage and shifting the focus to racing and peaking at Interschols.”

“We are just eager to move forward and to keep progressing,” lower Dolapo Adedokun said.

Upper Marvin Bennett applauded the team’s efforts for this meet. “We just came out trying to do our best in all of our events and leave it all on the track,” he said.

In just three days, the team will be competing at a smaller meet, a conventional dual meet against Exeter High School and Pingree.