Billerica girls, Reading boys rule Division 3 fields

HIGH SCHOOL TRACK

Nauset’s Rhianna Sutherland soars through the air while competing in the girls long jump relay during the Division 4 State Track Relays on Saturday. PHOTO BY PAUL CONNORS — MEDIA NEWS GROUP/BOSTON HERALD

Canton’s John Martinek clears a hurdle while competing in the boys shuttle hurdle relay during the Division 4 State Track Relays. PHOTO BY PAUL CONNORS — MEDIA NEWS GROUP/BOSTON HERALD

Dracut’s Sabrina Vitale, right, hands the baton to teammate Ella Annunziata while competing in the girls 4x1600-meter relay during the Division 4 State Track Relays on Saturday. PHOTO BY PAUL CONNORS — MEDIA NEWS GROUP/BOSTON HERALD

Newburyport’s Madison Butler clears a hurdle to win the girls shuttle hurdle relay during the Division 4 State Track Relays. PHOTO BY PAUL CONNORS — MEDIA NEWS GROUP/BOSTON HERALD

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By Brendan Connelly

Correspondent

KINGSTON >> Spring is usually reserved as a break period of sorts for Billerica track coach Cullen Hagan.

However, he’s always ready to jump into duty whenever needed.

Filling in on Saturday, he and his squad made history. Nyrah Joseph, Keelin Foye and Keira Moore combined to lead their team to a win in the shot put relay (27.77 meters). Meanwhile, the Indians had two teams place atop the the 4×1,600-meter showcase, as Billerica captured the MSTCA Div. 3 girls track and field relay championship at Silver Lake Regional High School.

“We just have a really talented group right now,” said Hagan. “They’re young. A lot of them are underclassmen, and we have a couple of really good leaders too that are seniors. Nyrah Joseph is just a scoring machine, Lily Bower is awesome, another senior for us, but so many of our kids are young, and this is their second or third time in a relay meet. The more experience they have, the better they get. This is just such a fun meet. Always fun to just run, focus on relays.”

Hagan was stepping in for fellow Billerica outdoor track and field coach Scott Arsenault, who was attending a wedding Saturday. Hagan himself typically serves as a distance coach in the spring. However, it wasn’t his first rodeo at the helm.

Hagan served as Billerica’s head coach during the indoor relay meet just a few months back, when the Indians won a similar showcase this past winter. They finished with 87.5 points as a team this time around, 32.5 clear of runner-up North Attleboro.

Meanwhile, Reading used a complete team effort en route to winning the boys relay title, accumulating 65 points. It was the first championship for the Rockets since 2016, back when they were competing in Div. 2.

“These kids are workers,” said Reading coach Scott Price. “They’ve had good kids ahead of them that they’ve learned from. I would remember that these kids just continued the tradition. We dropped down to Div. 3 last year, and we set our goals of a top five finish. We got second. That’s what we were trying to do (this year), top five again, remain a top program in the division. This morning, we had a conversation: ‘Let’s exceed that.’ ”

The Rockets registered points in every event, save for the DMR. Chris Barbato, Cameron Gigler, Clay Chase and Owen Sinclair led the team to a win in the 4×800 (8:12.61). Barbato also joined Andrew Princic, Max King and Rory O’Neil during a second-place finish in the 4×1600 (18:42.19).

Some other impressive performances from the day included Duxbury’s relay team of Lilah MacQuarrie, Riley Earle, Madeline MacKinnon and Liv Coperine. The group won the girls 4×200 (1:44.79) and 4×400 (3:59.73).

Purdue commit Nathaniel Assa anchored Marblehead to a meet record time of 10:28.17 in the boys DMR, joining Henrik Adams Will Cerrutti and Jacob Szalewicz to set the mark. The time unseated the prior record set by King Philip in 2012

No individual awards were handed out, but Gio Ribeiro may have been in the running for some hardware, as he led Southeastern to victories in three events. The junior teamed up with Christian Roy, Jonas Diedricksen and Joseph Cook for a first-place finish in the boys 4×110 shuttle hurdle relay (1:01.61), and later joined Diedreksen and Cook for another win in the long jump relay (18.08 meters). He topped things off with a win in the triple jump relay (37.79 meters), with teammates Nilson Cabral and Lentz Polycarpe.