Tallying Up the 2017 New York Track Sectional Wars

Overall, more than 80% of the points scored for the Federation events were by Division 1 athletes or teams, with 84.7% of the girls points coming from D1 and 78.4% for the boys. In only three of the 38 total events did more than half of the 31 points come from D2 athletes, those being the girls pole vault (19) and oddly both boys weight events, the shot put (16) and discus (20).  D1 athletes swept five of the girls events and scored all but 1 point in three others. The D1 dominance was as usual especially big in the relays, as D1 teams took all the points in the boys relays and 83 of the 93 points for the girls, with the major chunk of the D2 points coming from Bronxville's 2nd in the 4x800.

With the D1 athletes being so dominant in the Federation scoring, you would expect that the scoring for the D1 championship would be very similar to the Federation placements. That expectation is relatively true, but there are some wrinkles. The sections that are mainly composed of big schools such as S8, S11, PSAL, and CHSAA usually score higher in the D1 tally than in the Federation scoring. Sections that depended on the D2 for some of their Federation score like S1, S9 and AIS saw drops in their D1 scores. But there are wrinkles in wrinkles, and the PSAL girls actually did less well in the D1 standings mainly because Bryann Sandy did much better in her Federation 400 hurdles race, and the CHSAA girls had an extra boost in the D1 scoring because Halle Hazzard competed in the D1 sprints but not the Feds races.

So for the boys in D1, the results are pretty similar to the Feds results, but also a little different. Champ Section 11 is a mainly D1 power, and it jumped its Feds total by another 13 points to 137, with the biggest gain coming from 6 more points in the shot put where it hit the max 18 score. The top 18 score was also reached in the 400 meters and 3000 meter steeplechase.

Behind Section 11, the placements immediately started to change. Section 8, which is weak in D2 strength, jumped all the way from 7th in the Feds scoring to 2nd in D1 at 63, thanks especially to 14 points in the high jump where Benjamin Ross and Stanley Elysee were elevated to 2nd and 3rd places. Because its Feds total was boosted by D2 athletes, Section 5 fell back to 3rd in D1 with 58 points though it still had two wins including again Ben Bulkeley's 800 meters triumph and a 200 meter win by Noah Williams that replaced the pentathlon win by a D2 athlete.

The CHSAA was just a point in back of S5 in 4th, moving up two places and 10 points from its Feds result with 57 points, hitting the 18 point maximum in the 110 hurdles behind Aaron Banson and Oluwatomide Alao and getting a 1st from Jeff Walter in the D1 pentathlon. Both Section 6 and Section 1 fell back one place and 7 points in the D1 scoring to 5th and 6th respectively at 49 and 48 points, and Section 9 was the worst hit of all (blame D2 hurdling star Michael Mullally) by tumbling back 17 points and four places to 7th at 47. An AIS that has no D1 presence also took a fall as it lost the 14 points from the Feds score.

Even though the D1 girls had overall wider point swings than the boys between the Feds and D1 scores, the placements were more settled. At the top, Section 11 boosted its score by a huge 22 points, with 4 more points coming from the 4x400 relay behind the 1-3 finish of West Babylon and Brentwood to match the 16 points also taken by the 1-3s of Serena Choi and Mia Abulencia in the triple jump and Sade Meeks and Brittany Curtin in the shot put.

Section 1 dropped 12.5 points from its Feds total but still finished 2nd in D1, with its biggest event again the 2000 meter steeplechase behind the 1-3 finish by Alex Harris and Mary Hennelly. Section 5 saw little change from its Feds total and remained in 3rd at 70 points even though the contributions of points by events changed up. S5's biggest score came from 12 points in the 400 hurdles off of a 2-4 finish by Vanessa Watson and Sinead Sargeant.

Section 2 moved up 9.5 points and one place to 4th in D1 led again by Hannah Reale's 1st in the 800 meters and by D1 2nds from Alana Carroll in the pole vault, Jill Shippee in the shot put, and Alexandra Tudor in the triple jump. In an oddity, the big-school-heavy PSAL actually fell back 16 points and one place in the D1 scoring, though a critical factor there was Bryann Sandy's resurgence in the Feds 400 hurdles after a slow time on Friday in the D1 race.

Among the other sections are two notable items. Section 4 tumbled in D1 to 9th by almost half of its Feds score down to 27 points due to all the points it lost from its strong D2 contingent. For the CHSAA, Halle Hazzard contributed all of the D1 scoring of 18 points with a 1st in the 100 meters and 2nd in the 200 meters, and her absence from the later Feds events would usually have portended a goose egg there for the CHSAA. But along with a Feds point garnered by a rare CHSAA D2 team (Notre Dame), Leah Anderson moved up from a 7th place finish in the D1 400 to a 3rd in the Feds race to give her conference a boost.

Again, no surprises in the combined total as Section 11's 272 points more than doubled the score of its closest competition. The battle for 2nd came down to the wire though and maybe John Jay-Cross River's D1 2nd in the final D1 girls 4x800 event on Saturday to push Section 1 a point better than Section 5 at 129 to 128. Also breaking the century mark for 4th was Section 8 at 100.5, and the PSAL was 5th at 94.