Southold/Greenport freshman Ida Reiniger finished off her first year in varsity track and field in style. She earned all-state Class C honors in the girls 100-meter hurdles at the New York high school championships at Middletown High School last weekend.
Reiniger also secured the best finish, fifth place, among the 10 North Fork athletes who competed as she was timed in 16.08 seconds. The top six finishers earn all-state accolades.
“She’s just a worker,” Settlers girls track coach Tim McArdle said. “She does all the workouts with no complaints — [she’s] a kid that is willing to put in every ounce needed. She is talented. She is naturally gifted, and she is extremely fast … We put in the hard work to try to get her to learn the technique to hurdle, and she just stood up every day. She’s getting better and better.”
Milesplit.com listed Reiniger in sixth place. McArdle said that the winner, Taylor Foster, attends Brearley School, a private school. Those institutions aren’t counted among public schools.
As the lone ninth grader in both her events, Reiniger also finished 14th in the 400 hurdles in 1:12.54.
McArdle talked to Reiniger and her parents over the weekend about her future. “We did talk about setting goals — short term goals, long term goals,” he said. “We definitely have lofty goals that we’re trying to get to. I think she’s the type of kid that definitely can get there.”
Reiniger, who also competes in soccer and basketball, told McArdle that she plans to participate in indoor track next winter.
“I think she’s falling in love with the sport,” McArdle said. “I think she really wants to excel at it.”
Mattituck senior Daniel Gamboa-Boutcher was the top boys finisher in seventh place in his first year in the triple jump. He missed earning all-state honors by half an inch after his leap of 40 feet, 4.25 inches.
“He was definitely a little disappointed,” Tuckers boys coach Jordan McGinn said. “But then we said, if you saw where you were in November, your first time doing it, it’s incredible the progress you made.”
Gamboa-Boutcher will graduate from Mattituck on Saturday. “I wish I had him for four years,” McGinn said.
Six underclassmen from both schools will get multiple opportunities to reach the states in the future.
Southold/Greenport freshman Michael Garret took 11th place in the boys shot put with a personal best throw of 37-9.5.
“It was a great experience, getting to go up there with my teammates and seeing everybody else throw,” he said. “My goal up there was to throw a new personal best, which I achieved. Got to see all of the other throwers and talk to some of them about technique.
“The other competitors were very good. Many of them are upperclassmen. They were very strong. This is the top level. You see technique there that’s a lot better than you see at other levels. You saw a lot more people that are very dialed. They understand what they need to do to go out and perform,” said Garret.
Southold sophomore Emmett Tramontana, the youngest competitor in the boys discus, took 13th at 99-6. In the girls event, sophomore Le Neve Zuhoski finished 15th at 91-3.
“She didn’t finish as high as she would like to finish,” McArdle said. “But the experience is so valuable. Sending freshmen and sophomores to state, it happens every now and then. But opportunities like this were pretty big for them to go. The place finishing isn’t the most important thing right now. The experience of going through the process, the experience of understanding what’s going on and what the competition is like is going to pay massive dividends for her moving forward, along with some of the other young athletes that went as well.”
Senior Jeremiah King-Smith was 17th in the long jump at 18-6.
Tuckers sophomore Ever Meyer, who took up the pentathlon for the first time this year, finished in 10th place (2,154 points). Senior Rhianna Lutz was 17th in the girls long jump (16.25). Eighth-grader Rachel Kubetz was 44th among all classes in the 1,500 run (5:28.69). Senior Haley Lake, who has been hobbled by an ankle injury this spring, did not achieve the qualifying height in the girls pole vault.