OA Track and Field Victorious against King Philip, Coyle Cassidy

It’s safe to say that the Oliver Ames, King Philip and Coyle Cassidy track teams weren’t at full strength for Thursday’s meet because of April vacation. At the end of a windy afternoon at Muscato Stadium at both the OA boys and girls’ track teams came away victorious in the Tigers’ double-duel meet.

The OA boys easily downed both KP and Coyle Cassidy Thursday with strong performances from Jon Raduazzo and Chris Vilela in the running events, while Billy Hamilton finished first in the shot put.

The OA girls, meanwhile, relied on underclassmen Thursday. They all came through as the Tigers soundly defeated Coyle Cassidy and secured a narrow win over KP after finishing first in the day’s final event during the 4 x 400 relays. Laura Daley put in a strong performance in the discus event with a throw of 76 feet-10 inches, good for first place.

“I thought we performed well,” OA boys’ coach Jake Sunderland said of his team’s performance. “We were a little shorthanded due to April vacation, but we got a couple of impressive victories and we’re looking forward to the road ahead.”

“I’m very pleased [with the win],” girls’ coach Mike Darling said about the two wins. “We had to rely on a lot of our freshmen because we had a lot of kids away on April vacation. Even with the cut down squad we had, we got some excellent times and the kids stepped up against a very qualified KP team and a Coyle team that has a very good girls program.”

The track teams now enter the stretch run with Davenport Division matchups against Stoughton (April 26) Foxborough (May 3) and Sharon (May 10) in the next three weeks, with the Division II Relays (at Whitman-Hanson on April 30th) and the Freshman/Sophomore meet (May 7th at North Attleboro) sandwiched between. Those three league contests will be used as tune ups for the Hockomock championships and the All-States later in May.

“We’ve used these last few meets as kind of a tune up for the stretch run,” Sunderland said. “We’re focusing more on putting guys in events where they’re going to run for the championship meets, so that will be more of their opportunity to run some of the events that they’ll be running at the end of the season.”

After entering the season with high expectations, the OA boys look like they’ll fulfill the first goal by capturing the Davenport championship, especially looking at today’s performance.

On the other hand, the OA girls will have their hands full in a couple of weeks with Sharon. Darling is already mentioning that meet as the team’s toughest challenge of the season.

“Our key focus will be on the Sharon meet because they’ve got a good team this year and a lot of young talent,” he said. “This will probably be the meet of the year for us as the girls go for the Davenport championship.”

Download the movie