Pollack-Robbins, Brienza win two events each for Tartans track
By: Justin Feil
Tom Harrington was a little surprised with the margin by which his Stuart Country Day School track team won the state Prep B championship Tuesday after the way they performed Friday. Maybe he shouldn’t have been. The Tartans always seem to find a way to come through in the biggest meets.
"They came through," said Harrington, the Stuart head coach. "They taxed me a little, but it’s actually wider than I thought it would be. Friday, we had our conference meet and it had to be postponed with five events to go and we weren’t doing that well."
That performance prompted a team meeting on Monday, a day before Stuart was to go for its second straight Prep B crown.
"I was upset after conferences," Harrington said. "I didn’t think they performed to the level they should have. If someone beats you, they have to take it from you. You can’t give it to them."
Stuart decided the Prep B championships would be its time to shine. And despite again having one of the smallest teams at the meet, every Tartans performance proved important as they scored 168 points to outdistance Pennington, which finished with 129 points. Gill St. Bernards was third with 55 points. Yet, the win wasn’t as easy as the score would indicate.
"We talked about the fact that adversity is going to show up," Harrington said. "Whenever it does, you have to come back. Things happened in the meet, and the girls responded.
"Our big scorers scored big. The whole preaching throughout the season, though, was we need garbage points. The thirds, fourths and fifths. Maggie (Marquis of Pennington) won three races, but that’s not what gets the win. If they win, we want to double up and go second and third.
"We focused on having two or three score in every event. Our distance runners, they trained like in cross country. The stayed tight in a pack. My weight throwers all do the same stuff, so they stay as close as possible. If my first gets beat, you’re going to have two girls right there."
As it turns out, Stuart had athletes at the top and in fourth and fifth. In all, they won seven of the 14 contested events as every class contributed. Chloe Pollack-Robbins, a senior, and Laura Brienza, a freshman, each won two events.
"Chloe was a big scorer at the conference meet," Harrington noted. "Pennington has really good sprinters so you would expect them to do well in those events. I asked Chloe to do something I have never asked her to do, to run the open 400 and come right back about 10 or 15 minutes later and run the 400 hurdles. She’s defending champion in the hurdles so she really wanted that, but she did it. She got third in the open 400, and won the hurdles and won the 100 hurdles, which she lost at conferences."
Brienza won the 800 and 1600. Emily Driscoll was right behind in the 1600 and captured the 3200.
"Laura and Emily, they’re my double-barreled shotgun," Harrington said. "They got together and ran well."
In the weight events, Maya Thompson won the javelin, finished second in the discus and was third in the shot put as she put aside some possible distractions.
"They changed the order of events on Maya and she left her pet discus at school," Harrington said. "That could have got to her. But she still made the finals of every event. And that’s what we were talking about. In big meets, things are going to happen. The team most mentally tough is going to survive."
Similarly, Siobhan McCarty-Singleton was disqualified in the 100, but came back for third in the long jump and fourth in the 200, then anchored the Tartans’ winning 4×400 relay.
Harrington is hoping that Stuart can use the momentum of Tuesday’s championship to compete well today when they complete the conference championship meet. Two titles in four days would make quite a week for the Tartans, who may bring a limited number of athletes back for Saturday’s Mercer County Championships at West Windsor-Plainsboro High North. To complete the sweep today, however, Stuart needs another effort like Tuesday’s.
"It was much better," Harrington said. "They were a lot more focused than they were at the conference meet and it showed."
It showed and the Tartans shined in winning their second straight Prep B track title.

