Izzicupo leads Stoneham
It came down to the 4 x 400 relay.
Junior Christina Izzicupo edged Bishop Feehan's Meg Looney in the anchor leg to give Stoneham the Division 3 state championship with 47 points at the Reggie Lewis Center yesterday.
Bishop Feehan tied for second-place honors with Hingham (44 points).
"I just gave it my all with everything I had down the stretch," said an exhausted Izzicupo, who also took first place in the 300 meters (40.44 seconds) and high jump (5 feet 5 inches). "You could hear [Looney's] footsteps behind me, but I tried to block them out. Our team did an excellent job staying in this race."
Izzicupo, along with seniors Lindsey Kennedy, Chelsey Canavan, and Emily Nardone, set a meet record in 4:02.12, beating the old mark of 4:03.93 set by Franklin in 1999.
"They've been [stepping it up] for us all year," said Stoneham girls' coach Kevin Norton. "We're not huge in numbers so we're doing multiple events. Today we saw the talent of Bishop Feehan and we tried to focus on ourselves and max up our points any way we could. We had to do everything right in order to make this work out for us."
In the 4 x 800, Hingham's Maggie O'Connell, Mackenzie Lussier, Caryn Miller, and Shauna McNiff set a meet record (9:53.88), bettering Belmont's mark of 9:55.55 in 2000.
NcNiff also placed first in the 1,000-meter run.
Other winners include Triton's Deanna Latham in the 55 (7.37); Medfield's Karyn Moss in the 55 hurdles (8.68); Looney in the 600 (1:36.60); Pentucket's Paige Sutherland in the mile (5:11.01); and Winchester's Johanna Eidmann in the 2 mile (11:02.64).
The Hingham boys won their second straight state championship after a second-place finish in the 4 x 400 (3:31.43) behind East Longmeadow (3:31.18).
Hingham amassed 41 total points.
"We've been very fortunate to do well in the 4 x 400 and in all of the other relays," said Hingham coach Fred Jewett. "I felt really confident on our second lap. The meet was on the line with that race. They had tremendous courage and it really came down to teamwork at the end."
Hingham didn't place in the top three in the 4 x 800 or 4 x 200, but scored points placing fourth (8:40.69) and sixth (1:35.77) to grab 5 points, which was enough to beat Wellesley (36) and Milton (34).
In the 4 x 200, Milton seniors Chris Moore and Eric Wornum, and sophomores Maxwell Opara and Paul Connor set a meet record of 1:32.67 to surpass Wayland's old time of 1:33. Other first-place finishers include Jeff Williams from Hingham in the 55 (6.53); Chris Conway from Bishop Feehan in the 55 hurdles (7.71); Wornum in the 300 (35.47); Foxboro's Tim Keefe in the 600 (1:22.96); Marblehead's Kevin Bennett in the 1,000 (2:36.50); Wellesley's Tommy Mayell in the mile (4.26.20); and Dave Brown from Westboro in the 2 mile (10:02.88).
