Middleboro High boys outdoor track & field team snaps EB's 96-meet streak

Middleboro High coach TJ Smith knows first-hand how hard it is to defeat a George McCabe-coached track team.

Smith ran for McCabe, who was inducted into the Massachusetts State Track Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 2004, at East Bridgewater and won a cross country state championship in 2001, plus some divisional titles in track.

Entering Thursday, McCabe’s EB squad had won 96 consecutive dual-meets.

“There’s nobody in track and field I respect more than Coach McCabe,” said Smith.

All of that made Middleboro boys track and field team’s streak-snapping 72.5-66.5 victory over the Vikings all the more sweet.

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“It means a lot to me personally and to our kids because we know how good they are and how well coached they are,” said Smith.

The meet went about as expected. The Vikings excelled in the throws while the Sachems took care of business in the jumps. The track events were back-and-forth.

Middleboro went into the final two events needing to win one of the relays. The 4x100m meter relay team of Michael Correia, Robert Henry, Matt Gwozdz and Justin Mather sealed the win with a first-place finish and their best time of the season (45.4 seconds).

“They came through when we needed it the most,” said Smith.

EB’s streak dated back to 2009 (2007 was the last time a South Shore League opponent beat the Vikings) and ending it was years in the making for Middleboro.

“Kids that are seniors this year got their teeth kicked in by East Bridgewater their freshman and sophomore year,” said Smith. “Only their junior year did they start making it close. To even compete with them, it took quite a bit of improvement from us as a program. They’re the standard and they’re always good and they’re always prepared. They don’t make mistakes. You’re going to have to be very talented and you’re going to have to be perfect in your execution if you beat them. The intimidation factor was definitely something we had to get over.”

It took several big days to knock off the SSL powerhouse – some unexpected and others not as much.

Nathan Donahue ran the 400m hurdles for the first time and picked up critical points with a second-place finish. Charlie Montross won the long jump and high hurdles, while taking second in the high jump. Michael Neitlich won the 400m hurdles and the 400m.

Senior captain Noah DeGrazia was a bit of a question-mark coming into the meet. He missed the first two meets of the season while recovering from a long indoor season. He returned for Middleboro’s third meet of the season last week, but only competed in one event. Thursday was his first time thrown into the fire this season, and with little training (a critical aspect of being a middle-distance runner) he earned 8 points by taking second in the mile and winning the 800m, a close race that was decided by less than a second.

“He’s running at way under 100 percent, so he was huge for us,” said Smith of DeGrazia. “Today was the first time he fully went for it and I didn’t know what we were going to get out of him, but these seniors were looking forward to today and he was not going to miss today, that’s for sure.”

The seeds for winning this match were planted last weekend, when the Sachems had a strong showing at the Division 5 relays. The Sachems smashed three school records, finished second as a team and had five first-place relays. Those winners included the 4x110m hurdles (Jacob Briggs, Malachi McGill, Donahue, Montross), sprint medley (Gwozdz, Bolu Sotonwa, Neitlich, DeGrazia), triple jump (Sotonwa, Donahue, Isaiah Furtado), long jump (Donahue, Montross, Furtado) and high jump (Briggs, Montross, Botelho).

“I think the kids are feeling it. I think the relays helped. They were dominating at the relays,” said Smith. “That put in their brains that they can compete with anybody at our level.

“We’re a senior-heavy group and they welcomed this challenge. They weren’t nervous (against EB).”

The Sachems are now one of the top contenders in Division 5 and the SSL, but Smith knows just how difficult creating sustained success is. Putting together a streak like EB’s, well, seems impossible.

“We ebb and flow,” said Smith. “We’re way up this year, we’re senior-heavy. We’re going to have to retool and readjust next year and EB just seems to never retool, never readjust. They’re always loaded, they’re always top-heavy. It’s incredibly hard and to have a program to sustain that, to never mess up, to never miss a year for over a decade, it’s hard to imagine. I don’t even want to think about five years from now.

“I told (McCabe) my goal as coach is to help get Middleboro as close to the kind of program as they have and the reputation they have. That’s been the focus for us – to try to be what they are.”

Along with producing track stars on an annual basis, McCabe has built quite the coaching tree. Along with Smith, Marshfield cross country and track coach Dennis Sheppard is from that tree.

“The George McCabe coaching tree is massive and they’re all very successful, but none more successful than he is,” said Smith. “I’m a teacher and coach, and he’s the reason why.”

The boys team wasn’t the only team with something to celebrate. The girls also defeated EB to improve to 4-0 on the season and Izzy Wheeler starred. She posted a personal record of a foot in long jump (17 feet, 6 inches) to qualify for nationals.

This article originally appeared on The Enterprise: Middleboro track puts an end to East Bridgewater's incredible streak