Last season, New Westminster Hyacks tied a program-best at the B.C. high school track and field championships. This year, the Hyacks went one better.
New West Secondary placed fourth overall - the school program's best-ever showing since the provincial championship meet was first established in 1967.
Hyack athletes combined for 55 points, including a third overall 37 points from the boys' team to finish behind B.C. champion Oak Bay, runner-up St. Thomas More and Walnut Grove in the aggregate standings.
Last year, New West finished fifth overall a total of 49 points, tying the athletic program's previous best finishes achieved in both 1973 and '74.
"The team was able to maintain its combined team division finish in 2012," said Christine McNulty, who along with Bryan MacMaster helped prepare the team for the high school meets. "They worked hard during the season and it paid off at these championships."
Raquel Tjernagel earned all of New West's points on the girls' side, outsprinting Burnaby's Zion Corrales-Nelson to the tape 24.30 in the 200 metres run Friday at McLeod Athletic Park in Langley. The following day, the Hyack junior runner placed runner-up behind Corrales-Nelson in a fast 55.45 time in the 400. Both times were personal bests for Tjernagel.
"We have a little competition going," said Tjernagel. "My goal was to start as hard as I could and finish hard. I just tried to pretend that everyone was chasing me."
Grade 11 student Mihailo Stefanovic placed in four events, including beating training partner Bogdan Pavel for the gold medal in the boys' 110m hurdles.
Stefanovic clocked a sub 15 second 14.96, while Pavel was second in 15.19.
"It was good until the second last hurdle. I hit it with my trailing leg and then my buddy won," said Pavel.
Stefanovic, Pavel, Ethan Strome and Simon Rokeby also teamed for a silver medal in the 4x100m relay.
Stefanovic also placed fifth in the 200m and sixth in the triple jump after passing on his last two jumps with a sore heel.
"I could have done better," he said.
Strome also placed fifth in the 400m.
The STM Knights won a first-ever provincial banner in the boys' team aggregate, placing a track-program best runner-up behind Oak Bay in the overall team standings on Saturday.
Not since 1989, when STM great Peter Ogilvie led an all-boys' team to fourth place overall, has the small Burnaby independent school fared better at the annual end-of-school meet.
"I'm just so proud of them. It's a storybook ending for our seniors," said Knights track coach David Mattiazzo. "This (result) was won during practice. The program is the strength of our seniors. It was a special group."
Giovanni Trasolini and Sebastian Adugalski capped a five-year high school career together, earning back-to-back gold medals in the 4x100 and 4x400m relays, while also matching the other with a bronze medal in an individual event.
Trasolini placed third in the boys' 200m and eighth in the 100m sprint, while Adugalski was third in the 400m hurdles and seventh in the 400m.
But while winning the school's second third-straight 400m relay gold and a record eighth overall on Friday night was a highlight, earning STM's first gold in the 4x4 since the Ogilvie days was perhaps sweeter.
"That's the way we dreamed of ending our B.C. high school careers," said Adugalski directly after running the winning anchor leg. It's a dream come true. It's more than we could have asked for."
Mattiazzo had other adjectives to describe the effort.
"That was 100 per cent heart," Mattiazzo said. "(Sebastian) doing three 400m in one day is unheard of at any level, and finding something inside to keep going is just inspirational."
