Results | Photo Albums | Videos
Harpeth Hall
Back To Back
In early May, our virtual meet of this competition had Harpeth Hall projected to beat Baylor by five points with a predicted score of 120.5 to 115.5 and surely enough, that projection held true. Harpeth Hall won their 18th Track and Field State Championship in school history and second in as many years by exactly five points. Here's a breakdown of the their scoring:
Harpeth Hall | Baylor | |
| Event Wins | 1 | 5 |
| Events w/ Multiple Scorers | 6 | 5 |
| Total Events Scored | 17 | 15 |
| Total Points | 118 | 113 |
From the thousand foot view and considering the personnel that needed to be replaced, it's hard to pinpoint how the Honeybears were able to pull this off by just looking at this chart. Not only did Coach Romero need to replace his only senior, Sabrina Russell, who scored 32 points last May, but the season ending injury to Bella Guillamondegui, who won two events, also added to the difficulty of the defense campaign. After drilling down into the results here are a few key points that ultimately contributed to the victory.
- Distance Infrastructure: When you have a cross country program that has won back to back state championships, losing your top runner, while not ideal, is not a nail in the coffin. Last year with a healthy Guillamondegui, the team scored 51 points in events involving distances 800 meters and above. This year, with her on the sidelines, they scored 49. Lily Bowen won the 800m and placed 2nd and 3rd respectively in the 3200m and 1600m swapping places with teammate Annamaria Bacchetta who placed 3rd and 2nd in those same events.
- Year Over Year Improvement: Sabrina Russell made this difference last year scoring 32 points for the Honeybears and her understudy, Sarah Reynolds, almost made up all of those. Reynolds scored 27 over the course of the competition capturing multiple top three finishes with a 3rd place finish in the decathlon, 2nd place finish in the 100m Hurdles, and third place finish in the triple jump. Reynold improved her 100m hurdle time by almost a full second, her pentathlon score by almost 700 points, and her 300m hurdles by over two seconds since last May.
- Sprint Points: While those previous factors helped Harpeth Hall maintain the same output from the year before. The scoring in the short sprints may ultimately be what separated them from Baylor. In events that involved 200 meters and below, the Honeybears scored 27 points. Baylor scored five in these same events with zero qualifiers in the open 100m or 200m dashes. Lauren Wynn placed 3rd in both the 100m and 200m and Anna Lindsley was able to grab another point in the 100m as well while both contributing to relays that placed 2nd and 3rd.
Baylor placed runner up for the second time in five years. North Carolina commit Evie Culbreath accounted for four total victories and 46 total points for the Red Raiders. This is the most points of any single competitor across all five championships. The other event win was contributed by Mae Mae Powe who won the 3200m during the morning session.
Congratulations to coach Romero and Harpeth Hall. Now onto the boys.