A coach reflects on his last season

Housatonic Valley Regional High School was the host to the 2007 Berkshire League Track and Field Championship on May 19. That same day, the high school’s new track was dedicated to retiring teacher and track coach Dave Lindsay, who wrote in this week to share his impressions.

The Berkshire League Championship was a glorious event from my point of view because the field was filled with athletes, parents and friends and the competition showed the exceptional skills of many of the league athletes. I was also overjoyed to see the long distance photos showing the rain tents and clusters of athletes on the Housatonic facility — it looked like the States!

Our girls in sixth place and boys in eighth did not live up to our expectations of the early season, but we kept a solid corps of team members and they worked hard. I was also well pleased with the new coaches: Cindy Dunleavy, Chris Heacox, Tyler Beaujon and Jason Macfarland. Their efforts made us strong competitors this year and their skills bode well for the future of Housy track! The first three are former League All-Stars, and Jason was a high school runner and coached a high school tream last year.

Our girls 4x100 team lost to the only team who beat them during the dual meet season: Northwestern.

Paxton Thornton had an excellent throwing and jumping performance, winning the (All-Star) discus throw. Megan Pinckney made the long and triple jump finals for the third consecutive year. Hannah Savage was second in the 400 and part of the winning 4 x 400 relay team. She and Sarah Dudek, Kate Wilburn and freshman Kathleen Rogers earned All-Star status with their first-place upset victory over Shepaug and Nonnewaug!

The only All-Star boy was Tyler Burdick, winner of the high jump (he was second in Class S on May 30) but there were fine individual performances on the track by Liam O’Reilly, Evan Slaughter, Ben Gerowe and Hector Umana; and Doug Holmes still continues to improve in the pole vault.

With only four seniors leaving and some eager eighth-graders looking to Housatonic, we can expect even better spring things in ’08...

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