Track teams from Germantown Academy and Springside Chestnut Hill Academy traveled to the Academy of Notre Dame last Wednesday for the first girls' meet of the 2025 Inter-Ac League season.

Success in the field events, the middle-distance footraces and the hurdles propelled the Patriots of GA to victories over the Blue Devils and the Irish of Notre Dame. With the scoring arranged in a dual-meet format, Germantown defeated SCH, 57-46, and Notre Dame, 68-45. Notre Dame outscored Springside Chestnut Hill, 55-48.

On the track, GA sophomore Nieve Keitel won the 800 meters in 2:22.58, and in her first time competing in the 400, she won in 1:00.61. Annabelle Steckel, a freshman, placed second in the 800. Keitel, who is Germantown Academy's top runner in cross country, placed fourth in the 800 meters at the 2024 Inter-Ac League track and field championships.

Junior Lyla Perry finished third in the 100-meter dash, and freshman Wynne Campbell came in second in the 100-meter high hurdles. Perry anchored the Patriots' victorious 4 x 100-meters relay team, where she was preceded by freshman Jocelyn Germain and sophomores Myree Jean-Brian and Kaylin Trent as the foursome turned in a time of 52.43 seconds.

Patriots junior Sylvie Harrington was the only entrant in the 300-meter intermediate hurdles, netting first-place points with a time of 53.06 seconds.

At the start of the week, GA junior Layla Gentile set a new meet record in the shot put at Upper Dublin High School's Cardinal Classic. At Notre Dame, she heaved the ball more than a foot farther to win the event with a toss of 38'9". In addition, she took second place in the discus. Gentile won the gold medal in both the shot put and discus at the 2024 Inter-Ac's.

Another 11th-grader, Ava Dalton, cleared the bar at five feet even to win the high jump. Germain, a freshman, came in second in the long jump and junior Elli Wang was third in the triple jump.

Meanwhile, Springside Chestnut Hill collected points in the shorter track events and also scored well in the field events.

Junior Marlee Howard won both the 100 (12.56 seconds) and 200-meter dash (26.42), while senior Kennedy Hayward was victorious in the 100-meter high hurdles (15.33 seconds).

Freshman Nadia Bevan was second in the 200, and SCH made it a one-two-three sweep in that event thanks to a third-place effort by Jolie Kaoma. Kaoma was a key member of SCH's Inter-Ac champion soccer team and will play at Loyola University.

At the Inter-Ac League Championships last year, Hayward, Kaoma, and Bevan were part of Springside Chestnut Hill's gold medal 4 x 400-meter relay team, along with current freshman Mimi Gallagher. Hayward was the silver medalist in both the 100 and 300 hurdles.

In last week's 2025 league debut, Bevan was the runner-up in the 100-meter dash, and she took first place in the long jump, covering 17'7.25". Junior Gabby Kilshaw travelled 30' 11.25" in the triple jump for the victory in that contest, and she also came in third in the long jump. Third place in both the discus and the shot put went to Blue Devils freshman Madison Nathaniel.

Neither the Blue Devils nor the Patriots had much of a stake in the longest races on the track. Notre Dame senior Mary Rossano won both the 1600 meters (5:27.02) and 3200 (12:43.61). Host Notre Dame captured the top five places in the 1600, and the entire field in the 3200 consisted of Rossano and one of her Irish teammates, junior Carson Tierney.

The GA and SCH teams were already leaving the venue when the meet finished up with the 4 x 400-meter relay, so two quartets from Notre Dame were the only ones competing in the final event.