The Abington Heights girls track and field season concluded in May with a championship in the Robert Spagna Lackawanna Track Conference Championship Meet, a second-place finish in Class 3A at the District 2 Championships and the chance for several individuals to r8epresent the Lady Comets on the state level.
The Lady Comets had earlier won the LTC Division 1 and Jordan Relays Class 3A titles. They went unbeaten in the LTC for the 18th straight season.
Wyoming Valley Conference Division 1 champion Dallas brought a powerhouse team into the districts, altering the emphasis for the Lady Comets.
“That impacted how we approached the meet,” Abington Heights coach Frank Passetti said. “We have more individuals that have qualified for the state meet than we have in many years because we decided to not run them as heavy and focus on the events they had the best chance to qualify for.”
PIAA Championships
SHIPPENSBURG – Maggie Coleman closed out her Abington Heights career with a school-record performance that brought her within five-hundredths of a second of earning a state medal at the PIAA Championships, which were held at Shippensburg University May 23-24.
Coleman’s time of 57.15 in the 400-meter dash placed her 11th out of 37 entries in the event and gave her the top Abington Heights finish.
The top eight finishers in each event earned state medals and scored points for their teams.
Coleman broke the record set by Julie Nicholas, when she posted a time of 57.43 in 1998.
Tomara Seid qualified for the state meet in three events, topped by the pole vault in which she cleared 10-6 to finish in a four-way tie or 15th out of 24. She was 19th of 34 in the triple jump with 37-1 and 22nd of 28 in the long jump with 16-4½.
Coleman joined Anna Pucilowski, Reese Morgan and Erin Bartell for the 3200 relay in which the Lady Comets finished 16th of 28 with a time of 9:40.08.
Pucilowski competed as an individual in two distance races. She was 22nd of 36 in the 3200-meter run in 11:00.13 and 26th of 32 in the 1600 in 5:14.98.
Morgan finished 28th of 32 in the 800 with a time of 2:20.79.
Peyton Fox from Scranton Prep placed 11th out of 32 in the discus with a throw of 122-11.
District 2 Championships
SCRANTON – Dallas won seven of 18 events to outscore Abington Heights 129-87 1/3 and claim the Class 3A girls title in the District 2 Championships May 12-13 at Memorial Stadium.
“Knowing how strong Dallas was really led us to try to focus on getting kids qualified by hitting the state qualifying standard,” Passetti said.
Abington Heights did not win an individual gold, taking its only title in the 3200-meter relay, but did manage in seven instances to hit the lofty standards needed to qualify for the state meet even without winning district gold. The seven qualifiers through the standard matched the total of the other 17 schools combined.
Jumper Tomara Seid qualified in three events, distance runner Anna Pucilowski made it in two. Reese Morgan and Maggie Coleman were each part of pre-meet strategy discussions on the best chances to make states and made it in one event.
Seid had three of the five individual silver medal performances by Abington Heights, taking second in the long jump, triple jump and pole vault.
Combining with clearing a career-best 12-2 in the pole vault in the Friendship Games in Warwick, N.Y. May 9, Seid set three Abington Heights school records in a five-day str2etch.
Seid broke Michelle Horwath’s 44-year-old mark in the long jump when she leaped 17-10 at districts. She set the triple jump mark at 38-8½. Seid took second in the district pole vault by making it over 12-0.
8 Pucilowski battled with District 2’s strong group of female distance runners, including Madison Hedglin, one of the Dallas team leaders who doubled up as 1600 and 3200 champion. Pucilowski took second in the 1600 in 5:03.86 and third in the 3200 in 10:58.62.
Morgan advanced with her third-place finish in 2:17.84 in the 800 where she came in behind the two fastest times in meet history, posted by Carbondale’s Kate Korty and Wyoming Area’s Ella McKernan.
Coleman set up her strong state effort with a second-place finish in the 400 in 57.84. She was also fourth in the 200 in 26.23.
Pucilowski, Morgan and Coleman also followed freshman Bartell on the district championship 3200 relay team, which won by more than seven seconds in 9:29.45.
Emily Dennis added a third-place district finish for the Lady Comets with a javelin throw of 106-9.
The top six finishers earned district medals and the top eight scored team points.
Scranton Prep’s only 10 points came from Fox’s discus title with a heave of 125-6.
Lackawanna Trail managed just two points in Class 2A where Lakeland won the title.
Spagna Championships
SCRANTON – The Seid sisters won all three jumping gold medals and Anna Pucilowski finished first in the two longest races May 7 when Abington Heights ran away with the girls title of the Spagna Championships at Memorial Stadium.
Tomara Seid set a record while winning the triple jump and also won the long jump. Kiana Seid won the high jump.
Pucilowski’s wins came in the 1600- and 3200-meter runs.
Those victories, plus one in the 3200 relay, allowed Abington Heights to finish first in one-third of the events. The Lady Comets won with 134 points while Delaware Valley was beating out North Pocono 77½-76 for a distant second-place finish in the 10-team field.
Tomara Seid won the triple jump with 38-4, topping the previous record of 37-11½ by Lakeland’s Brooke Estadt in 2015. She won the long jump with 17-5¼.
In addition to the two golds, Tomara Seid captured a silver medal in the pole vault and took sixth in the 100 hurdles.
Kiana Seid was the only high jumper to make it over 5-0, which she did on her final try. Emily Dennis was fifth with 4-8.
Pucilowski won the 1600 in 5:14.97 and 3200 in 11:02.88.
Kresge, Bartell and Morgan were part of both the first-place 3200 relay and third-place 1600 relay. Calli Gilboy joined them for the 3200 win in 10:09.99. Maggie Coleman was with them for the 1600 and a time of 4:13.07.
Coleman’s time of 57.55 in the 400 was better than the existing record of North Pocono’s Kaitlyn Lewis, but another North Pocono runner, Kaitlyn Kravitz, went even faster, beating Coleman with a time of 57.38.
Coleman added a bronze medal for third in the 200 in 26.60.
Morgan was second in the 800 in 2:20.16.
Fox won a gold medal in the discus and produced all 12 team points for Scranton Prep.
Lackawanna Trail had a single point in Class 2A.
