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BOSTON – The Lunenburg boys’ indoor track and field team was able to improve upon its performance at the Mid Wach C championship by matching its final place at the District E Division 2 Championship at the Reggie Lewis Center in Boston.
The District Championship went to Ayer Shirley Regional with 65 points, followed by Littleton (53 points), and then Lunenburg with 37 points.
“Obviously district’s should be a little stiffer competition, more schools, and we were third in that too just like league’s,” Lunenburg boys’ indoor track and field head coach Mike Spare said. “The Mid Wach has been pretty competitive the last few years, we finished behind Littleton at league’s and it kind of makes sense that we were a little behind them at the next level too. They’ve had a really good program the last few years, and Ayer Shirley has been strong too.”
Lunenburg’s star freshman shot putter Ray Beardmore fell slightly short of his best performance of the season but settled for a respectable second place overall in the district championship with a toss of 47 feet. Beardmore’s top performance this year is an excess of 53 feet.
“It was tough for (Beardmore),” Spare said. “We worked on some things, went over some video, and I think we’ll have it straightened out for next weekend’s all state championship.”
The Knights did stack their mile relay at district’s and it surely paid off, as the quartet raced to a first place finish with a 3:36.12. Cam Begley, Lucas Pentedemos, Jayden Pereira, and Connor Martin made up the star-studded relay.
“It was a really good time,” Spare said. “They were seeded around 3:40 so it was better than their seed time. They’re all juniors so we’re hoping to make it a little further up the rankings next winter and through the spring.”
Junior Cam Begley continued his stellar season racing to a third-place finish in the 600m run (1:28.83).
“(Begley) has been getting a little bit faster all year,” Spare said. “Him and Pentedemos work out together, and they work really hard.”
The 300m squad pulled in some stellar performances as Jake Burns finished fourth (37.76) and Mike Laine was right on his heels in fifth (37.86).
“There’s a really good group of sophomores,” Spare said. “And those guys are all 300m, 400m, 200m types. They’re tough kids and are going to do really well going forward.”
Shawn Stillman secured fifth in the 55-meter dash (6.91). Pentedemos took sixth in the 1000m (2:51.82) and Ben Dunlap placed fourth in the mile (4:56.09).
“Ben Dunlap and Matt Pilon have been doing really well,” Spare said. “(Dunlap) has been floating around the 5-minute mark (in the mile), and was able to break that at district’s. And the two of them almost ran the same time at the D5 meet, they both ended up with 4:56.”
Littleton won the Division 5 State Championship with 56 points, followed by Ayer Shirley with 46 points, and Weston with 35 points. Lunenburg finished 14th with 10 points.
Ray Beardmore turned in the top individual performance at the state championship, finishing third in the shot put with a 46-04.
The 4x200m relay finished seventh at 1:36.72. The mile relay also took seventh (3:40.90).
“It was tough, the D5 meet was three days after the district’s,” Spare said. “So there wasn’t a lot of time to recover and reset before you go right into the state divisional meet. Just being consistent through that is impressive for those guys. There were 74 teams with people going to D5, and 38 who scored, so to score points I’m pretty happy with that too. I’m excited to start spring, we have some injuries that we’re working through and getting people back and I think we have a chance to have even a better spring than we did winter.”