Back On Track: Falcons Fly To Indoor Title

As Josie Kamas led Lexi Fitzsimmons home in the 3A girls 3,200-meter race at the indoor state track championship on February 18, the Severna Park bench started roaring their teammates on.

It wasn’t only because the Falcons were about to post another one-two finish in a distance race: in that moment, they collectively realized they were on the verge of ending a near-half-century drought.

On the strength of their distance specialists, and some help from the pole vault pit, the Falcons doubled up second-place Largo in the team standings and claimed their first girls indoor track championship since 1977, the first year of Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Association (MPSSAA) records in the sport.

“We were watching and cheering them on. I remember looking at the scores and realizing we could actually win it,” said Grace Redmond, who came home first in the 800- and 1,600-meter races. “It was just an amazing feeling to realize that we were going to do it.”

Redmond led Siena Pegues to a one-two finish in both of those events, a reversal of the region meet where Pegues came out narrowly on top.

In addition to going one-two in all three distance races, the Falcons raced to victory in the 4x800 relay, where Kamas, Fitzsimmons, Harper Wallace and Kathryn Murphy outpaced the field.

Adding three more capable distance racers to the indoor team — Redmond plays field hockey in the fall, and Pegues and Wallace are on the soccer team — proved to be a massive upgrade that helped parlay the cross-country program’s longtime success into an indoor triumph at long last.

“We have a distance-heavy squad, so we really needed to sweep in those events. Grace and I are both really pretty new in our racing careers (having only started in high school), so we were just at it after the gun,” Pegues said. “I think we knew that we had a shot to win it, but I don’t think anyone anticipated it would be by that much. My parents weren’t even alive the last time we won, so it was nice to get that name up (in the gym) and see that as a competitive sport as well.”

The unsung performances of Alexa Holt, who was the pole vault runner-up, and Sydney Davis, who had a huge personal best to finish fifth in the 3,200, underscored the team dynamic and scoring valuable points in case your big guns don’t quite fire as intended.

And when it all comes together, it’s even better.

“A lot can go wrong at a meet and your best laid plans end up not working out, but fortunately not much went wrong for us,” said Severna Park coach Josh Alcombright. “We didn’t talk a lot about where we would end up, but we encouraged the girls to just do what they’ve been doing, and it was really great to see it pay off.”

It was a historic day for a storied running school, and it seemed fitting that the reality of their success set in as Kamas, the cross-country stalwart and distance team leader, set off on her final dash.

By the time Kamas started her kick, sporting a cast due to a broken hand sustained earlier in the winter, she had dropped most of the field, but she wasn’t sure where Fitzsimmons and Davis were.

“I normally start going a little faster around 600 (meters) and then really go at around 200, but in this meet I just went all out from the start of my kick,” Kamas said. “I just had to give it all I had just because I didn’t know who was right behind me; it could have been someone from another school and we needed the points. When I crossed and saw it was Lexi right behind me, I was really happy.”