The Streak lives on.
And, because Abington Heights went 6-0, including 4-0 in Lackawanna Track Conference Division 1, to run its streak of consecutive girls track and field dual meet victories to 114 since 2006, another extended run continues.
Abington Heights has now won 19 straight LTC division titles and 21 in the last 22 seasons.
“Only once a year, at the beginning of the season, we talk about it,” said Frank Passetti, who coached both the boys and girls teams to repeat division titles this season. “I have some of the older girls talk about it.”
That led to a description of the streak originators that Passetti found humorous and had to share with the girls who helped get it all started.
“One of the girls said, ‘we feel like we can’t lose because we’ll let down our ancestors’,” Passetti said. “ … They definitely feel the pressure of it because they don’t want to be part of the team that ended it.”
The Streak creates conflict for the coach at times because of the nature of track being both a team and an individual sport.
“As a coach, I have very mixed feelings about it because you’d like to make decisions for athletes that are in their best interests for getting them ready for the end of the season,” he said. “Sometimes when you feel the pressure to try to win a meet, you don’t always make a decision that is in the best interest of the individual athlete; you make it in the interest of the team.
“That makes it a little harder, but the girls don’t want it any other way. If I said, ‘listen, we’re not going to try to win this meet’, they would be very upset with me.”
A crossover meet with North Pocono, not part of the division standings, was the biggest challenge to the dual streak.
The division title streak went virtually unchallenged again as Abington Heights won each meet by at least 75 points, with an average margin of 119.3-27.5.
Freshman Aliya Lucarelli lost just once in the sprints when she was beaten in the 100-meter dash. She won the 200-meter dash in five duals and took the 400-meter the only day in which she did not compete in the 200.
The depth and balance of the roster make for many different combinations for the Lady Comets, who went unbeaten in the 3200-meter relay in duals and unbeaten in the 400-meter relay within the division, even without always using the team’s best possible combinations there.
“We bounce people all around,” Passetti said.
Jumper Kiana Seid consistently produced multiple victories, distance runner Anna Pucilowski was undefeated and Emily Dennis, also an effective jumper, won the javelin in every meet.
Boys
Abington Heights defeated Valley View, 86-64, on April 21 to break a first-place tie, clinching at least a tie for a title that the Comets won outright when they finished 4-0 in the division for the second straight season.
The team’s seven individual first-place finishes came from seven different athletes, and Abington Heights used 10 runners in the 12 spots to sweep the relays.
Liam Peoples and Jack Shoemaker were both part of relay wins to begin the day in the 3200-meter and to end it in the 1600-meter.
The Comets’ wealth of middle-distance runners showed through when they took all nine points in the 800 with Paul Rowlands, Joseph Grad and Peoples finishing 1-2-3. Grad had also been part of the 3200-meter relay win.
Gavin Ewing won the high jump and was part of the 1600-meter relay win.
Jacob Laird won the 300-meter hurdles, and Owen Morgan finished first in the 1600-meter.
The Comets outscored the Cougars 22-5 in the throws, where Carter Plantz (shot put), Adrian Azar (discus) and Derek Williams (javelin) were the winners.
“Probably our most consistent strength is in our throws,” Passetti said.
Plantz led that group, taking nine of a possible 12 first-place finishes within the division schedule, including going unbeaten in the shot put and winning the discus in all but the Valley View meet.
The Comets won their other three division meets by at least 44 points each.
