By Senior Correspondent Marty Ogden, Editing and Graphics by Ron Knapp
There are 174 schools that compete in indoor track in Connecticut and the top 18 qualifiers in 15 events from the recent class meets will converge upon Floyd Little Athletic Center in New Haven at noon Saturday to crown the State Open team and individual champions.
While there can only be one champion for each event, the top six place in all events, except the pole vault and sprint medley relays, will earn the opportunity to compete on March 2nd at the Reggie Lewis Center in Boston.
MySportsResults has been providing free coverage of CT’s track and field athletes all season long and we will do our best to preview some of the most exciting events to watch and look at who is in contention in the chase for the team titles.
Boys Championship
Hall of West Hartford repeated as State Open champion last year and Greenwich boys took 2nd, their highest finish at the meet.
Based on seeds the following teams can score in the mid to upper 20s and should finish high in the standings: Xavier, Windsor, Bethel, Danbury, Lyman Hall, Hall, East Lyme, Bloomfield, and Ridgefield.
An illness swept through the Xavier team yet before last Saturday, they still held off a hard challenge by Bethel to win the Class L championships. Last century, it seemed like Xavier was winning a State Open almost year or at least contending for one. But while the Falcons have won four out of the past five Class L titles, the Open has eluded them with their last coming in 1999. The big question is where are they going to put their distance runners? They can bolster their relays or keep the same lineup as the Class meet. Owen Martin, Jack Ouellette and John Larkin should do well in the distance events, and of course they have recent school record holders Oliver Guzy in the long jump and Hunter Feitel in the pole vault. The biggest potential wild card is Stylz Mitchell who has run much faster than he did last week in the 55m and 300m. Even if you go strictly on seeds this year, Xavier has enough potential scorers to score in the upper 40s, but if a couple of their runners get over their illnesses, there is a potential to score even more.
Where Windsor scores points, they score a lot. While they only finished 3rd in Class L with 53 points, many of their points will transfer to the Open. They have either the first or second seeds in the 300m, 4x200m and 4x400m relays. While they should score…
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