Malvern squeaks by CHA at Inter-Ac Track Champs
by Tom Utescher

Aiming to protect a one-point lead going into the final event of the 2009 Inter-Ac League Track and Field Championships, the Chestnut Hill Academy Blue Devils went out and broke the meet record in the 4 x 400 meter relay. The problem for meet host CHA was that the Friars of Malvern Prep broke that same record by a little more, and wound up winning the league laurels with a total of 62 team points to the Blue Devils’ 61.

The two schools had been tied at 44 points apiece with four events to go, but after the results from 200 and 800 meter races and the 300 meter intermediate hurdles came in, Chestnut Hill carried a 57-56 edge into the “four-by-four.”

Penn Charter had set the old standard for this relay back in 2005 with a time of three minutes, 27.11 seconds. Chestnut Hill lined up senior Alex Logue, sophomore Ian Miller, senior Phil Thomas, and junior Ibraheim Campbell against Malvern juniors John Malick, Brian Leonard, Wallace Spencer, and senior Joe Price.

Penn Charter’s lead-off runner, junior Ryan Brown, was ahead after the opening leg, but by the end of the second circuit the Quakers had slipped to third and Malvern was in front, just ahead of the Devils. At the final hand-off the Friars led by about five meters, and the long-legged Price was able to stay in front in the final lap of his scholastic career. Malvern collected six team points for its first-place time of 3:25.26, and Chestnut Hill received four points as runner-up, finishing in 3:26.81.

Staged every year since 1887, the Inter-Ac meet is the oldest scholastic league championship event in the United States. In the 2009 edition,

Haverford School was third in the team standings with 41 points, then came Charter with 33, and Episcopal Academy, with 18. Sixth-place Germantown Academy received seven of its nine total points from two seniors in the high jump, where Dean Melchioni was runner-up and Tyler Regan placed third.

Chestnut Hill had gone 5-0 in league dual meets, beating both Malvern and Haverford by 16-point margins. Saturday’s championship meet began with the five field events, where the Devils took away a total of 21 points, while Charter garnered 18 points and Malvern, 14. CHA’s Thomas, bound for the University of Rhode Island, won both the high jump and the triple jump, and was third in the long jump. Penn Charter pulled nine team points out of the pole vault, with Jordan Dean winning the event and fellow junior Adam Dworetsky placing third. Quakers senior Justin Renfrow was second in the shot put.

Chestnut Hill had hoped to build up a slightly thicker cushion in this portion of the meet, but as longtime coach Paul Hines observed, “We scored fewer points in the field events than we anticipated, but then we scored more in the running. I’d thought we’d have about 59 points overall and we came up with 61.”

In the sprints and middle distance races, CHA, PC and Malvern saw their gold medal aspirations take a hit as Haverford finished first in the 100, 200, and 400, and Episcopal won the 800.

The Fords’ junior speedster, Tom Hopkins, took the 100 and the 200, and he also won the long jump to capture the Inter-Ac’s George Greenwood Award, which is bestowed upon the top individual point scorer at each year’s championships. In the 200, Hopkins’ time of 21.74 seconds broke the 1992 record set by CHA’s Gerald Howard. Howard’s time was originally recorded as 21.6 seconds, but converted to the modern F.A.T. (fully-automatic timing) equivalent, it becomes 21.84.

Penn Charter senior Shawn David had won the silver medal in the long jump, and on the track his twin brother Dareem struck silver in both the 100 and 200 meter races. Both are University of Maryland recruits.

Two distance-running rivals, CHA freshman Dustin Wilson and Malvern senior Matt McCullough, won the 1600 and the 3200, respectively. McCullough defeated runner-up Wilson for the Inter-Ac cross country crown last fall, then Wilson won an anchor-leg finishing sprint over the senior in a distance medley relay early this spring. On May 6, McCullough countered by winning both the 1600 and 3200 in the dual meet between the two squads.

Last Saturday in the 1600, McCullough made his move early in the final lap, as he had the previous week, but this time Wilson was able to stay with him and won a tight sprint to the line by 17/100 of a second. On this humid afternoon, the older McCullough won the 3200 over Wilson by a little over two seconds, taking the lead on the back straight and holding it. The third-place points went to CHA courtesy of senior Mike Fitzkee, who’ll enter West Point this fall.

Wilson took second in his heat of the 800, but here the final results were based on times from two heats, and in the other section Malvern’s Drew Berrodin moved up to take second overall by completing the two laps was just 1/100 of a second faster than Wilson.