The long season of sprints, jumps, and vaulting came to an end on February 17th and culminated in the boys indoor track team placing second among all Queens schools. Only Francis Lewis would out perform the Hawks. This second place finish marks one of the best Townsend Harris boys indoor performance in recent years. Along with the success at Queens Indoor Championships, seven of the members of the team qualified for the City Championships and will represent Townsend Harris and themselves when they face off against the best track and field athletes in the five boroughs. The Hawks may have two more members attend as alternates.
There were several key athletes who had a large contribution to the teams success. One of which includes freshman Muhamed Bicic. After a successful indoor season Bicic was able to qualify for the City Championship as a part of the 4x800m relay team along with senior captain Kyle Su, sophomores Noah Silversmith and Abdoulaye Diallo; alternates for this event are senior Thomas Sullivan and junior Stanley Harcharan. The relay team placed third with a time of 9:03. Bicic also placed 3rd in the 1600m run out of 20 other runners finishing with 4:51 beating his previous time by about 5 seconds.
Regarding his team’s strong performance, Bicic acknowledged the team’s rival, Francis Lewis, “We knew that the meet was going to come down the line with our rival Francis Lewis so we made sure we went up with a fight.”
Another memorable performance included that of junior Minhaj Rahman finishing in 3rd place is the 55m hurdles with a time of 00:8.75 seconds. Rahman will also be representing Townend at the City Championships for the 55m Hurdles.
Junior Yash Sharma will be representing the Hawks at the City competition in the 3200m run because of his 10:29 finish at the Queens championships.
Incoming sophomore Abdoulaye Diallo, a Francis Lewis transplant, placed 3rd in the 600m run with a time of 1:24 and qualified for the City competition.
Diallo was happily surprised by the team’s success said, “I never felt so nervous before a race. I literally sat there doing breathing exercises Mr. Hanson taught us in health.”
Head coach Orlando Martinez and assistant coach George Rio agreed that this win was due to the combination of hard work and teamwork from the boys and without the win would not have been to great.
Coach Martinez was enthusiastic about how well his team performed, “For a small school with an exceptionally smaller amount of boys the team ran great.”
Coach Rio agreed and highlighted one factor that helped propel this team to one of the school’s best indoor finishes, “We were very proud of the kids effort. It was a team effort from top to bottom.”
With borough championships now past, the seven who qualified for City Championships will make their final indoor performances at the Armory on February 22nd.
