Hillsborough girls run into loaded county field

Team places third; Young, Davia win events

by Rudy Brandl, Sports Editor
   Sometimes, you just have to tip your cap to the competition.
   Hillsborough High girls’ track and field coach Rich Refi couldn’t complain about his team’s performance at last Thursday’s Somerset County Championships. Although the HHS girls didn’t win the team title for just the second time in the last 11 years, Refi felt his athletes ran, jumped and threw well enough to win in most years. The veteran coach walked away from the meet with a new realization.
   ”The county got real good,” Refi said near the end of the meet after reviewing some of his team’s times and distances. “We ran well today. We performed well.”
   Hillsborough, the two-time defending champion and winner of nine county team titles in the past decade, expected a tough battle with Ridge, Franklin and Montgomery. Refi knew it wasn’t going to be a runaway like in many previous years, but he figured his team would be in the mix.
   Montgomery pulled off the shocker of the season so far by winning the team title with 98 points. Ridge finished second with 89 and the Raiders were third with 70.
   ”I thought it would be closer,” Refi said. “There were a lot of close races and we weren’t getting the upper end of the points.”
   The Hillsborough girls crowned two individual champions – senior thrower Angela Davia and versatile junior Ebony Young. Davia accounted for 16 points with a title in the shot put (36-2), fourth place in the discus (95-9) and fifth place in the javelin (105-2).
   Davia landed awkwardly on her ankle during the javelin, her first event of the meet, but didn’t allow the pain to stop her from winning her first county outdoor title. She wasn’t thrilled with her discus throw but hit her best mark of the season to win the shot put.
   ”I just shrugged it off after it happened,” Davia said. “You can’t do anything about it. I just had to move on. I couldn’t let it affect me. It feels really good to win. It was my best for the season.”
   Davia was happy to win with former HHS standout Taryn O’Connor in attendance. O’Connor, now a freshman at FDU, watched her former teammate win and score 10 big points for the Raiders.
   ”Taryn was here today and she cheered us on,” Davia said. “I was hoping to win the discus, too, but it was nice to win a title.”
   Young led the HHS girls with 28 points, on the strength of a first place in the triple jump (37-7¾), seconds in the long jump (16-8) and 400 hurdles (1:04.00) and a fifth in the 400 meters (59.38). Young set a new meet record in the triple jump, breaking last year’s mark set by graduated star Melissa Arango by nearly two feet.
   Arango and O’Connor dominated last year’s county and conference meets, leading the HHS girls to team championships. This year’s younger team went undefeated in April, winning two relay meet titles and an 11th consecutive divisional title with another undefeated dual meet season. Thursday’s finish can’t take away what this team has already accomplished this spring.
   ”We’ve won three trophies already,” Refi said.
   Young and Davia accounted for 44 team points. Other scorers for the HHS girls included Ashley Smolinka in the 800 (3rd, 2:19.14) and 1,600 (5th, 5:14.44), Carlin Dunne in the 800 (4th, 2:19.34), Julianna Miller in the 3,200 (6th, 11:46.47), Erica Reiss in the 100 hurdles (6th, 16.27), Jaclyn Marangella in the pole vault (5th, 9-0), Danielle Deretchin in the shot put (3rd, 34-1) and the 4×400 relay team of Dunne, Stephanie Ogrodnik, Ali Moran and Anna Spaniol, who placed fourth in 4:07.84.
   The competition figured to get even more intense in this week’s Skyland Conference Championships, set for Tuesday at Hillsborough. The addition of Hunterdon Central, North Hunterdon and powerhouse Voorhees makes the Skyland event much deeper than the county meet.
    “Points were hard to come by today,” Refi said. “They’ll be harder to come by in the conference.”