Track:  Bergen County Jack Yockers Relays

ORADELL — Every team in every high school sport took a hit when the COVID-19 pandemic cancelled spring sports a year ago. Seniors graduated, underclassmen chose not to come out and turnouts were down at many schools.

And with essentially no winter track season, North Jersey coaches have had to set lineups for one of the spring’s most chaotic and unpredictable events, the Bergen County Jack Yockers Relays, and hope that they made the right decisions despite limited knowledge.

That proved to be especially true for Cresskill boys coach Chris Woodford, who made a big gamble and held a last-minute tryout leading to the Cougars’ first divisional relays title since 2008.

“We were originally going to try and have the meet before the 4-x-400, (the traditional final event),” said Woodford after the unit of Ben Klein, Jack Zeigher, Alex Riccardo and Brandon Tilp finished second in the event, enough to secure an 85-82-81 win over defending champion Glen Rock and Hasbrouck Heights in the C division, the only one of 10 divisional races with any drama all weekend.

“Every team lost something when last spring was cancelled,” said Woodford, who won his first major relays title since taking over as head coach for Rich Miller in 2017. “We lost all our hurdlers and all our high jumpers, so we figured to load up six or seven events and scare up enough points in the rest of the events.’

“We threw a Hail Mary, and we switched from our strongest 4-x-800 team, which wasn’t really that strong and put some guys in the 4-x-400 to give the chance to get the most points. After we had a disaster in the javelin, we really needed something,” said Woodford, whose team expected to win the javelin and ended up not scoring.

An all-freshman group had finished fourth in the shuttle hurdles and a makeshift team grabbed a fifth in the 4-x-100 earlier in the meet to help make up for the points lost in the javelin.

And an impromptu Thursday tryout for the high jumping spots found freshman Andrew Faucette and senior discus thrower Giancarlo DiRese as surprise teammates in the event, where the Cougars grabbed four unexpected points.

But the Lions were still tied with Hasbrouck Heights with Glen Rock a point behind when the final event started.

As expected, Westwood easily won the event in a meet-best 3:28.7, but right from the gun, Klein grabbed a large lead over the runners from Glen Rock and Hasbrouck Heights and the Cougars never let up.

‘Our freshman and sophomores were enormous in the stepping up,” said Woodford, who pointed to ninth-grader Joshua Yoon, who was part of winning teams in the long and triple jumps, 4-x-200 and sprint medley as the leading point-getter.

Hasbrouck Heights took the C girls meet for the first time since 2015, relying on the experience of junior Amber Barrios, who ran the fastest legs on winning shuttle hurdles, intermediate hurdles, sprint medley relay and 4-x-400 teams, and junior Isabella Drezek, a mainstay of wins in the 4-x-800, 4-x-1,600 and distance medley to power the Aviators to a overwhelming 147-67 win over Rutherford.

“I was 100-percent worried about this year when our combined turnout was a third less than last year (119 to 79),” said Brady. “But we had had a great freshman class last year and another good one this year and they stuck it out.”

Brady also pointed to senior Kristine Robertson and first-year junior Paige McGuire as key performers.

Emerson sweeps the Small Schools

The double group D winners dominated with the girls winning 149-76 over Becton and the boys taking a fifth straight title, 126-78, over Bogota.

“Our boys numbers were down after a great class graduated and our girls numbers were up,” said head coach Mark Ledgerwood, “But we knew we had talent in key areas and our kids bought into what we wanted to do and competed hard in every event.”

The Cavos boys were led by Steve Finley Individual Field Event co-winner Nathan Storz, who set a school-record long jump of 21-8 1/2 and led all jumpers, including state contender Rashawn Markman of Waldwick. Storz also triple-jumped 44-1, just an inch off the Emerson mark, and is the first plaque winner from the school since the legendary Andy Papathanassiou won the same award in 1984.

The girls got great leadership from seniors Jessica Coyle, Allie Lachman, Emilia and Eliza Dul, Emma Callegy and Alexa Gitto, all of whom were part of winning relays.

“The girls set goals that they didn’t want to be Division D winners, but wanted to compete with the larger C schools,” said Ledgerwood. “They accomplished that.”