WESTFIELD — Sienna Moore doesn’t have many track meets remaining in her high school career. The Mahar Regional School senior is cherishing the ones she does have, however.
Moore continued her dominance of the pole vault at the MIAA Division 6 Track & Field Championship on Thursday at Westfield State University. Her top clearance of 10 feet, 6 inches, was a full foot better than the rest of the field as she captured a state title during Day 1 of the two-day event.
“It’s definitely exciting,” said Moore, who followed up her win at the Western Mass. Division 2 championship with a second title in as many weekends. “It was a bigger meet so there was that adrenaline rush today. Now I just want to keep it going.”
Moore missed three attempts at clearing 10-9 to close out her day. Her PR sits at 10-8, and she’ll look to try and topple that again next week at the All-State Championship, also back at Westfield State.
“All-States will have some girls who can jump pretty high so there’s going to be good competition there,” she said. “My goal is to make New Englands so I’m hoping to finish in the top six there.”
As has been the case in recent years, the pole vault was dominated by Franklin County jumpers on Thursday. Behind Moore, Frontier’s Ayla Starr and Alena Maes-Polan tied for second place with leaps of 9-6. Mahar’s Stellina Moore, just a seventh-grader, took seventh at 8-0.
It was a big day on the track for Mohawk Trail’s Ellie Pinkham. The eighth-grader moved up two places from her seed in the 200-meter dash, ultimately crossing in fifth place overall with a time of 27.07 seconds.
Teammate Emmy Sisum also ran well for the Warriors on Thursday, as she matched Pinkham with a fifth-place performance in the 400-meter hurdles. Sisum crossed with a time of 1 minutes, 11.20 seconds.
Greenfield’s Lillia Kachelmeyer reached the finals of the discus and wound up sixth overall.
On the boys side, Frontier senior Jack Vecellio was the top seed in the 400-meter hurdles and had a state title in his sights down the stretch. But Vecellio clipped the final hurdle of the race and fell, ultimately finishing fifth in 59.52 seconds. Ipswich’s Keith Townsend won the event in 57.89, and Greenfield’s Theo Popusoi took sixth in 59.65.
Mohawk Trail senior Dennis Simmons cracked the top 10 in the 2-mile, as he wound up eighth overall with a time of 10:15.19.
Full results for every event contested Thursday were not available at press time.
Day 2 of the state championship will be Saturday back at Westfield State, where the rest of the individual events as well as all three relays will be contested.