Hempfield girls win title again
Hempfield had won three consecutive WPIAL Class AAA girls team track championships, but to win its fourth, the Spartans needed to come up with something amazing on the last lap of the final event at Baldwin. Sophomore Gabbie Holmberg delivered.
The fourth-place finisher in the WPIAL individual finals in the 400-meters last year took off on the anchor leg of the 1,600-meter relay even with Mt. Lebanon’s Claire Dougherty, broke away down the stretch and gave the Spartans a win in the event and a 78-72 victory in the team standings for Hempfield’s fourth title in a row.
“It was amazing, and I knew she was an amazing competitor and I had run against her before,” Holmberg said. “We had all of our team all around the whole entire track and I knew it was going to be close, but I got to pull away.”
With Hempfield’s championship streak on the line, Holmberg had a simple strategy as she awaited the baton.
“Sprint. Just sprint as fast as I can,” Holmberg said. “I tried to look where everyone was looking, but I was just going straight for the finish line.”
As dramatic a win as it was for Hempfield, it was just as disappointing for Mt. Lebanon, which finished second to the Spartans for the third year in a row and has never won a WPIAL girls team track title.
“I’ve never been in a meet [that ended] like this, but I always thought it would be really fun, and it was unbelievable,” Mt. Lebanon coach Oscar Shutt said. “The girls laid it all out there, it was special for me going up against Hempfield because I went to Hempfield and … if I was going to lose to a team, I’m glad it was them.”
Things weren’t quite as stressful for North Allegheny, which won its third consecutive Class AAA boys crown and the 11th overall with a 94-56 victory against second-place Butler and a 91-59 win against third-place Canon-McMillan in the quadrangular meet.
“This is very special because a lot of people had us picked not to be as successful because we lost some of the best athletes in the WPIAL and that this was going to be a down year for us,” North Allegheny coach John Neff said. “It proved not to be, and the younger kids and the seniors said that it was not to be.”
Because the field events ended so early, North Allegheny knew it had the meet won before the final two track events.
Though the margin of victory was nowhere near the 61 points it defeated Canon-McMillan by in 2014, winning with a team effort meant even more than doing so in blowout fashion.
Beaver also repeated in Class AA as the boys dominated Freeport, 98-52, and blew past both Riverside and Washington for its second title in a row. Beaver also became the third school — and first since Wilmington in 1992 — to capture boys and girls Class AA titles as the girls defeated Mohawk, 81-69.