WESTFIELD – A week after the Southwick-Tolland Regional High School boys’ track and field team won the Western Massachusetts Division II Championship, the Rams returned to action Saturday afternoon and qualified a trio of athletes to next week’s state championships.
Southwick’s Jonathan Collins competes in the Divisional Track Championship Pentathlon at Westfield State University Saturday morning. (Photo by Liam Sheehan)
The top four finishers of each event in each sectional meet automatically qualify for the All-State meet, with the remaining six spots to be filled by the next best times across the state.
Southwick turned in several solid performances at Saturday’s Central/Western MA sectional meet at Westfield State University, highlighted by a pair of top-three finishes from Jonathan Collins and Dan Lane. A multi-event winner last week in Shelburne Falls, Collins started his day by competing in the pentathlon, which he won with a final total of 2989 points.
Teammate Dan Lane qualified for a pair of events next week, finishing first in the 400-meter hurdles in 57.54, the fastest time among Western MA qualifiers. Lane also qualified for the 110-meter hurdles, finishing in 15.50. Lane and Collins will be joined by Nick Peterson, who qualified in the triple jump with a time of 43′ 5.5″.
Westfield High School also qualified multiple athletes to the state championship Saturday, when four individual athletes and a relay team qualified at Fitchburg State University. Morgan Sanders led the Bomber girls by winning the 100-meter hurdles in 16.32 seconds to automatically qualify, while Taylor White (11:52.48) finished in the top section of the two-mile.
Ben Doiron took home a victory for the Bomber boys, winning the two-mile race in 9:38.73. Teammate Jordanio Oquendo finished the 200-meter dash in 23.13 to also qualify for the state meet. Westfield’s 4×100-meter relay team led the way in Western MA, finishing the event in 43.88, .42 seconds ahead of Western MA champion Amherst.
The 2015 All-State meet will be Saturday afternoon at Fitchburg State University.
