Mount St. Joseph's track and field team poses with the Athletic Association of Catholic Academies trophy after winning the league championship last Tuesday.

by Tom Utescher

Coaches in every sport routinely tell their teams that every point matters. In some rare situations, every fraction of a point also matters.

So it was with Mount St. Joseph Academy's track and field athletes as they sought the school's first league title at the 2017 Athletic Association of Catholic Academies Championships, which took place last Tuesday at Gwynedd Mercy University.

The winner wasn't determined until the results of the very last event had been tabulated, and precise number crunching was called for as the Mount Magic edged out Villa Joseph Marie Academy by one third of a point, 101.66 to 101.33.

"They were the favorites," noted Mount St. Joseph head coach Kitty McClernand, "but we scored in almost every event and everybody did their best. It just added up for us."

There was also a tight race for third place, with Gwynedd Mercy Academy (located right next door to the University) accumulating 79 points to take that spot over Nazareth Academy, with 78 points, and number five Villa Maria, with 76. The last three places went to St. Basil's (60), Country Day School of the Sacred Heart (36), and Merion Mercy (5).

Fractions of a point came into play for the top contenders due to a three-way tie for sixth place in the high jump in the middle of the meet. Two thirds of that single sixth-place point went to the Mount thanks to juniors Annie Princevalle and Jean Reilly. They cleared the bar at 4'6", and so did Katie Schramm of Villa Joseph, netting one-third of a point for the Jems.

Mount St. Joe did very well in this event overall, with freshman Kelly Rothenberg winning it (5'1"), junior Grace DiGiovanni finishing second (5'0"), and senior Kieran Glowacki placing fifth (4'8"). Field events, in general, proved to be the Magic's strong suit.

"Kelly qualified for Districts with that jump," McClernand noted, "and Grace had already qualified."

In regular season AACA dual meets, the Magic lost only to Villa Joe, with the Jems winning relatively comfortably. However, in the league meet the individual strengths of some of the other schools tended to knock the Jems down to lower places a little more often than the Mount. Sacred Heart, for example, finished seventh as a team, but its strong distance runners took first and second in both the 1600 and 3200 meters.

In addition to Mount St. Joe's dominance in the high jump, the Magic had senior Grace Gelone (a Norwood Fontbonne Academy graduate) win the shot put (31'10") and take second place in the discus (82'03"). Fellow senior Sam Bauer was fourth in the shot (28'4"). The Magic didn't score in the javelin, but Villa Maria dominated the event and Villa Joe only came away with third place.

Pole vaulters were in short supply throughout the league, and the Magic happened to have one of the two who were entered in the league championships. MSJ sophomore Bridget Joyce won at a height of 10'3" to secure the first-place points for Mount St. Joe.

The Mount saw junior Grace Wallis land in second place in the long jump (16'5.5"), and senior Julie Hoover was fifth (15'5.5"). These two Mounties would also make their mark on the track. Hoover won the 100 meter hurdles (16.48) and was fifth in the 300 hurdles (50.90), while Wallis led off for the 4 x 100 relay. With junior Kennedy McClelland and seniors Siobhan McBride and Sarina Clary following Wallis, the Mount placed third in 53.08 seconds.

In the 4 x 400, the Magic quartet of freshman Kylie McGovern, sophomores Meg Ciasullo and Ryan Good and junior Molly Higgins came in second in 4:13.70 behind victorious Villa Joe. DiGiovanni and Good ran the first two legs of the 4 x 800, and juniors Jen DeGroat and Caitlyn Vesey finished it out as the Mount placed fifth in 10:12.11.

Ciasullo had run some good 800-meter splits in relays during the season, but her times in the open 800 weren't up to her capabilities, and she wound up not getting seeded in the fast heat of that event at the championships. Still, she pushed hard in her own race to produce a time of 2:25.58, and that proved to be good enough for her to place second overall.

"There were a couple of little things like that where there was sort of a question mark for us, but things worked out okay," McClernand explained.

Overall, though, Villa Joe garnered many more points from the individual footraces than the Magic.

Just before the final event on the track, the 4 x 400 relay, the Magic were leading the Jems, 92.66 points to 85.33. After Villa Joe won that race handily and Mount St. Joseph came in second, the Mount's lead diminished as the score tightened to 100.66 - 95.33.

The triple jump competition still had not finished, partly because one of the St. Basil jumpers had to take a break to run over to the track, where she would race in the 4 x 400 for the Panthers. It turned out that two St. Basil athletes placed second and third in the triple while Gwynedd Mercy won it, so those two teams claimed the bulk of the points to be earned in that event.

Still, Villa Joe garnered fourth and fifth place, obtaining six points that might move the Jems ahead of the Magic by two-thirds of a point. However, there was still one point for sixth place to be figured into the mix, and it so happened that MSJ junior Meg Dodaro grabbed it with a jump of 32'7.5". Mount St. Joseph had held on by one-third of a point to win the school's first track and field title in the AACA.

"All day, the announcers were giving the results of the events going from sixth place up to first," McClernand related. "I think they must have known what was at stake in that triple jump, because for that one they went from first place down. When we heard that Meg Dodaro had definitely finished sixth, we knew we had it."