Windham High’s outdoor track and field teams showcase skills in early season meet

By Matt Pascarella

Windham High School’s boys and girls outdoor track and field teams headed to Noble in North Berwick to compete against Noble and South Portland in the second meet of the season. Windham girls finished second with a score of 70 and Windham boys finished second with a score of 47.

Windham senior Marina Schwarz sets up to throw the javelin
during a track meet against Noble and South Portland
in Berwick on Thursday, May 1.
PHOTO BY MATT PASCARELLA   

Girls

Windham senior Marina Schwarz threw the discus for 100 feet for the first time ever, with a distance of 100-0, and a third-place finish. Her sister, freshman Jennifer Schwarz, did the same, with a throw of 100-7, and finished second.

Marina Schwarz also placed third in the javelin with a throw of 74-11, shattering a previous personal-best record of hers. She placed third in the shot put with a throw of 30-04.50 and qualified for the Southern Maine Activities Association’s competition, as well as the state championships.

“After doing this for three years it felt good to break that boundary and then I watched my sister do it,” said Marina Schwarz. “I broke one personal record last year in javelin and this is my second this season, and this is only our second meet, so it felt good. The more people push each other the more they get better; I think our team is doing great this season.”

Windham senior Ava Gerrity finished second in the long jump with a 15-03.75 distance.

In the 1600-racewalk, Windham senior Monica Farley finished first with a 10:58.25-minute time. Windham sophomore Leana Robbins finished second with a time of 11:08.21.

Many WHS athletes tried new events including Sydney Broadbent in her first 300-low hurdle race; Stephanie Roghelia in first pole vault; Addison Shanholtz, Olivia Smith, Eva Vancelette in their first-triple jumps; Brooke Tuttle in the high jump; Myla Vercoe running the 4x400 relay; Sarah Inman in her first ever 1600-racewalk and Lexie Beach in the open 400.

“A very, very impressive and important outcome for us as we work weekly to build our championship meet rosters,” said Windham outdoor track and field girls’ coach Jeff Riddle. “Truly the team is uniting, smiling, and trying new things, all while giving everything they have, their very best, on that day.”

Boys

Windham senior Carter Engleman finished first in the pole vault with a 12-00.00 height, first in the javelin with a 151-05 throw, and first in the long jump with a mark of 21-00.50. He was first in the 110 hurdles with a time of 15.07 – a new WHS school record.

Windham senior Rory Good finished first in the 300 hurdles with a time of 41.71 and second in the 110 hurdles with a 15.50 time.

“I think the meet went well,” said Good. “A lot of us set personal records pretty good. We kept our heads up, a few of our teammates got personal records, but they’re still looking to drive more – they’re passionate, they’re ready, I think it’s going to be a good season for us. For me, my blocks need improvement. For the team, in the relay we can work on being loud, because we had a mess up; as a team I think we could pick each other up a little bit more, other than that I think we’re doing great.”

Windham senior Karl Longstreth placed second in the 100-dash with an 11.11 time. He had set a new record in the 200-dash in a previous meet and placed second in this meet with a 22.68 time.

“Overall, the team had a great performance with a lot of personal records,” said Windham outdoor track and field boys’ coach Paula Pock. “Including Aaron Sanborn in the 400, Noah Saucier in the triple jump, Ethan Fletcher in the 100, Brayden Bean in the javelin, Mason Bragdon in the 1600. Overall, we had a great meet, and a lot of athletes did an amazing job and tried new events. Our goal is to carry on the momentum and continue to build on our early performances.” <

WHS girls’ tennis win streak continues after sweeping Biddeford

By Matt Pascarella

Windham girls’ tennis went into a home match against Biddeford after winning two matches in a row and they made it three straight by defeating the Tigers 5-0 at Windham High School on Monday, May 5.

Windham senior Afomiya Timerga returns a shot by her
Biddeford opponent during a girls' prep tennis match on
Monday, May 2 at Windham High School.
PHOTO BY MATT PASCARELLA 

“The team is off to a great start,” said Windham girls’ tennis coach Katy Dresnok. “Our team is growing and rising up to more challenging matches. My goals for the doubles is to really work with strategy and to encourage proper placement and communication among the partners and really, really focus on placement over power. With my singles we’ve been working really hard on serving and recovering, and foot work; if they can get the fundamentals down, they seem to improve at a much faster speed. Tennis is a very mental game, so if the player can stay calm and just take it one point at a time, with a good strong mindset that’s going to overpower anything. Today wasn’t our normal ladder ... today was a really great win considering people played in different positions, showing team versatility.”

In the singles matches, Windham junior Jasmine Lucas won her sets 6-4 and 6-2; sophomore Denali Momot won her sets 6-2 and 6-0 and senior Afomiya Timerga won her matches, 6-4 and 6-2.

“At first the wind wasn’t great, but as I got into it, it was a good match,” said Lucas. “I think my ground strokes were pretty strong, my serve wasn’t as consistent as I’d like it to be, but towards the end it got good. I’ve definitely gotten more consistent, this is my first year being first singles, so that was kind of intimidating at first, but now I’m in a good rhythm.”

Lucas enjoys being in the first singles position for WHS and says it makes her play harder.

In the doubles matches, Windham senior Zoe Dries, and junior Sydney Harmon won 6-2 and 6-1. Junior Ellise Gallop and Grace Hansen won 6-1 and 6-1.

“We did pretty good,” said Dries. “We tried to play our game most of the time, we pulled through, we won; we were really good on net both of us; we had some really good long balls.”

Dries said that she feels communication needs improvement and making good solid contact on the ball, not wonky hits.

Harmon and Dries said they understand each other’s play a lot better, they know where each other’s going to be.

“Our serves were pretty good and consistent throughout the whole game and kind of reading where they were,” said Harmon. “If they were on one side making sure we go to the other side and finishing the point. Definitely the newer players have gotten more experience, and rallies have been longer from three or four weeks ago. Consistency with placement is a whole lot better and stronger now.” <

Windham varsity baseball drops season-opener to Biddeford

By Matt Pascarella

In the season opener. Windham varsity baseball took on Biddeford at Windham on Friday April 25 and while Windham was slow to swing the bat and didn’t cross the plate, resulting in a 10-0 loss to the Tigers, there’s plenty of time for improvement.

Windham senior Grant Coppi throws a strike during the
prep baseball season opener against Biddeford at Windham
High School on Friday, April 25.
PHOTO BY MATT PASCARELLA

Windham senior Grant Coppi pitched four innings, had zero earned runs, one walk and six strikeouts. Senior Cayden McCartney pitched two innings, had one walk and one strikeout.

Windham varsity baseball coach Chris Doughty said these statistics tell him Biddeford scored one run that they earned. Windham made six errors and struck out 10 times, so 16 opportunities shifted in Biddeford’s favor, and the Tigers took advantage of that.

“I know we’ll shore up the defense,” said Doughty. “We just lacked that big hit today; if you don’t try, you’re going to fail every time, we just got to get going. We’re playing right now like we’re afraid to fail, and we just need to play confidently. When you start making error clusters, that’s when you get in trouble. You can’t play baseball being afraid to fail, it’s a game of failure. We don’t want to be peaking in game one, we want to be peaking in game 12, 13, 14, 15 – that’s when we want to be getting to our best baseball. We’ll get there.”

At the start of the game Windham sent three batters back to the dugout after two strikeouts and a fly out to shortstop was caught by Windham sophomore Alex Pastore.

McCartney singled and freshman Aiden Rinaldi walked. Unfortunately, they were left on base.

Biddeford scored one run in the second inning, to lead 1-0.

Windham kept after it. After a walk and senior Josh Plummer was hit by a pitch in the second inning, sophomore Mike Redlon singled.

In the bottom of the third inning, Windham freshman Mason Rulman notched his first varsity hit with a grounder to left center field.

“It felt good,” said Rulman. “I put the work in, and it shows when I go up there and hit off a good pitcher pitching. Our pitchers were throwing strikes, they were letting the other hitters hit it right to our defense, we just need to make the plays. We did OK swinging the bat, but we need to do a lot better. I feel like we could have a lot more communication. We could have beat them, we just need to lock in and not make errors.”

By the fifth inning, Biddeford was up, 7-0. Redlon had a diving catch in right field. Windham was unable to catch Biddeford, and the game ended after six innings.

“Right now, we’re stilling trying to figure out how to play as a team,” said Coppi. “We’re kind of playing scared; we got to focus on what we all want and that’s to win, but we just got some things to figure out. We had a couple young kids step up and make great plays. It definitely got harder, but I think we did a good job of not hanging our heads. I think we got to play with more confidence and make less errors, swing the bat more and us pitchers got to pound the strike zone.” <

Windham boys’ tennis falls to Marshwood in an unprecedented match

By Matt Pascarella

Windham varsity boys’ tennis played their second match of the regular season against Marshwood at Windham High School on Tuesday, April 29. Windham lost 5-0, but in this unique match four of the five sets were pushed to tiebreakers. Windham players gave their all and played with everything they had.

Windham junior Carter Mathieu hits the ball over the net
during a boy's tennis match against Marshwood on 
Tuesday, April 29 at Windham High School.
PHOTO BY MATT PASCARELLA

In the single match Windham junior Nolan McPhail won 6-3, lost 1-6 and lost 6-10 in the tiebreaker.

“I knew I could beat him the first set, I felt really good,” said Windham singles player Nolan McPhail, who was recovering from being sick. “By the end of the first set, I was getting really tired and my stomach started hurting. And in the second set I just fell off and lost that one. By the end, I was trying to save my energy, because I knew we were going to tiebreaker; so, during the tiebreaker I was just trying to stay in there, but he outlasted me, it was still a good game, and it was really close. He got more aggressive, and I got more sluggish and that led to me losing, but I still feel I did well. The first-game nerves weren’t there. I had the mindset where it was like ‘I can win this,’ but it’s just not my day.”

Windham senior Zach Noonan lost his first singles set 4-6, won 6-4 and then lost his tiebreaker 10-2.

Carter Mathieu lost 4-6 and 0-6 in his singles sets.

In the doubles matches, juniors Padrick McGuire and Nate Paulding lost 2-6 and won 6-1. They pushed their sets to a tiebreaker and left everything on the court but unfortunately lost 10-4.

“We pushed so hard during the second set,” said McGuire. “We come into the tiebreaker trying to keep momentum, but going so hard in that second set kind of kills you; we’re going to work toward it and we’re better for it. I think they were a good team, they were definitely communicating, in the end they just pulled it through better than we did. We lost a little bit of the communication towards the end because of the exhaustion, and next time, we’ll be ready.”

Paulding said communication was a lot of it, they’ve known each other since like fourth grade; it’s fun playing together. Once you get to the point of losing that first set, it can be really hard to come back, but it can also be really easy. That can help communication and help play. He said he was a little nervous going into the tiebreaker.

Tiebreakers kind of drain Paulding, sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn’t.

Windham seniors Brian Gilheany and Asher Knott lost their first doubles set 2-6, then won 6-7, then lost the tiebreaker 4-7.

“I’ve never lost a 5-0 match that was this close; four out of five going into a tiebreaker, it’s crazy, I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Windham varsity boys’ tennis coach Garry Stone. “And in every case, our guys lost the first one but then won the second one – to me that’s showing some grit. They didn’t roll over, they faced some adversity, and they came back. I can’t be upset with the end result because every kid out there gave everything they had. I’m actually very proud of them even though it looks like we got crushed, we all know that we didn’t; it was very close.” <