Catonsville's girls team kicked off yesterday's Class 1A-2A State Indoor Track and Field Championships at the 5th Regiment Armory with a bang, setting a meet record in the first event -- the 3,200 relay.
From there, however, the Comets, who took fourth with 29 points, quietly plummeted to earth, silenced by a Fairmont Heights squad that won the girls team competition with 60 points.
On the boys side, upstart Atholton scored a meet-best 62 points and held off Howard County rival and runner-up Oakland Mills (43), third-place Forestville (41) and fourth-place Glenelg (37) for its team title.
"When the girls set a meet record in the first event, where can you go from there?" asked Catonsville coach Jeff McDaniel, who was surprised as anyone when the fourth-seeded foursome of Brigid O'Connell, Renee Tiroccihi, Eden Rellihan and Ann Giardina finished the 3,200 relay in 9:59.7, a time that would have broken the Class 3A record by six seconds. "Just mentally, a couple of my girls disappeared after that event.
"I didn't think we could beat Fairmont Heights [which boasted the top seed in six events] or Central [which won the event 10 consecutive years], but I thought we would be a lot closer to them than we were and we should have been."
Running indoor track for the first time, Greg Lopata, a senior at Hereford High, emerged as Baltimore County's only individual state champion by winning the boys 800 run in 2:04.0. Lopata, 5 feet 11 and 148 pounds, also took second in the 1,600, finishing less than three seconds behind Atholton junior Zachary Tropf (4:35.8).
"I just wanted to beat Greg Curtis [of Oakland Mills] so bad because he beat me in the region," said Lopata, who set a school record in the 800 by six-tenths of a second. "I've been training so hard for two weeks because I really wanted this. I've been praying to God every night and I've been taking my vitamins every day. When I crossed the line, it was the greatest feeling I've ever had. I loved it."
Lori Havrilla of Catonsville, who threw over 33 feet in winning her region meet, had to settle for fifth in the girls shot put with a toss of 30-10 1/2 . Havrilla later took seventh in the high jump, and teammate Carrie Hunt was seventh in the 300 --.
Catonsville's girls team, which took fifth in the 800 and 1,600 relays, picked up three points in the 500 --, courtesy of a 5-6 finish by senior Carrie Hunt (1:23.9) and Rellihan (1:24.1).
O'Connell, only a sophomore and one of many underclassman on McDaniel's squad, was runner-up in the 3,200 (12:08.4) and finished seventh in the 1,600 (5:42.5).
Giardina, a senior, took fifth in the 3,200, and her freshman sister, Sarah, placed ninth, just ahead of Hereford's Sarah Rives, zTC a freshman who broke into the top 10 with a time of 13:15.6.
Loch Raven senior Tom Coard ended his indoor track career by finishing fourth in the pole vault (11-0) and sixth in the 55 hurdles (9.0).
Ben Fedor earned all four of Overlea's points by finishing fourth in the boys 800.
"I'm a little disappointed because I thought we could have at least come in third today," said McDaniel. "We had some excellent performances, but we should have picked up 10 points in the shot put and we only picked up two [with Havrilla's fifth-place effort] and Ann [Giardina] definitely should have gotten third in the 2 mile and she just mentally wasn't there today. . . . I don't know what it was."