Cover credit – East Islip School District
The Redmen of East Islip High School saw the girls’ varsity winter track team take home their second consecutive Suffolk County Championship earlier this month. The team finished the competition with 75 points, beating Sayville and Hauppauge to claim the title.
The track team is led by head coach John Reynolds who is joined by assistant coach Nicole O’Connor. The East Islip Redmen are members of the New York State Public High School Athletic Association (NYSPHSAA) and compete in League V. East Islip competes in the small school championship due to school size.
On February 2, twenty-six varsity girls track teams piled into Suffolk County Credit Union Arena on the Suffolk County Community College Brentwood campus in search of a title. A majority of the teams did compete in their respective events, but the top four finishers in each competition are what make the difference in a team’s fate.
Indoor girls track is a compilation of roughly sixteen events consisting of various running, jumping, and shotput competitions. For the Redmen, they amassed seventy-five points at the meet to take the Suffolk County Championship title. The team is made up of roughly twenty-four girls who all have their own specialties and excel better in different competitions. Let’s take a look at what brought the East Islip girls the victory.
To start the day, Grace Micali took home second and third place finishes in triple and long jump, respectively. Katherine Simonetti earned a fourth-place finish in the high jump. Chloe Garantina rounded out the jumping portion of the day with a first-place finish in the long jump, setting a new school record with a jump of 18 feet, 1.75 inches.
Next was the racewalk where Brianna Tucci secured a second-place finish. Danielle Simonetti set a new school record in the 1,000-meter race when she finished second with a 3:05.00. D. Simonetti also competed in the 600-meter race and finished in first place with a 1:40.13.
The girls competed in three relay races, beginning with the 4×800 meter relay in which Ali Coppinger, Kaylee O’Boyle, Kathryn Simonetti, and Caylee Smith notched a second-place finish with a time of 10:23.84. Moving onto the 4×400 meter, the second-place finish was earned by Avery Ernest, Danielle Birner, Alexa Menendez, and Danika Tidridge with a time of 4:14.88. Finally, it all came down to a third-place finish in the 4×200 meter with a time of 1:49.25 which was earned by Maya Brown, Chloe and Kalyee Garatina, and Danielle Simonetti.
Last year they won their first-ever championship in school history. East Islip decided one trophy wasn’t enough and went back-to-back this year to make for an even more magical run, literally and figuratively…
