Pikesville Finds Success at State Track Meet

The Pikesville High School indoor track and field team made some noise at Monday’s Class 1A state championship meet at the Prince George’s Sports and Learning Complex in Landover.

Pikesville boys turned in a strong performance to finish fifth in the state. The Panthers ended up fifth with 43.5 points as Smithsburg (80.5) ran away with the meet.

The girls finished in 13th place, but had a lot of good performances.

The boys hoped to have a shot at the team title, but Smithsburg just had too much. The Leopards kept scoring points in a variety of places, and no team could keep up.

But the fifth-place finish is something Pikesville boys coach Adam Hittner was happy about because it will lay the foundation for bigger things.

“The success that we’re having is helping us generate a bigger team,” Hittner said. The coaches feel that more kids will be interested in coming out for the track team if they keep doing well.

Pikesville won the Class 1A Central Region title last week as its boys edged Northwestern by just one point (108-107). The Panthers came back days later in this meet to score well again.

“We’re learning a lot that going to help us be better in the spring and in the coming years,” Hittner said.

Menelik Solomon finished second in the 3,200-meter run; Haile Kosten added a third-place finish in the 800; Max Sterling took sixth in the 1,600, and Maury Sall finished sixth in the 500.

Dan Dolya added a tie for third in the pole vault.

But the Panthers really made their money in the relays. They got second in the 3,200 relay, fifth in the 800 relay and ended the night with a third-place finish in the 1,600 relay.

The 3,200 and 1,600 relays both set school records.

Sall, Quadir Rohe, Chris Tolliver and Anton Daniels made up the 1,600 relay team. The 3,200 relay team consisted of Sall, Tolliver, Kostin and Josh Borris. And Rohe, Daniels, Sall and took care of the 800 relay.

The Pikesville girls scored seven points for their 13th-place finish. Boonsboro ran away with the team title, but the Panthers are starting to grow.

The best effort for the girls came when they took fifth in the day’s opening event: the 3,200 relay.

Emily Starobin, Ryann Plotkin, Alex Shearer and Stephanie Honig combined to set a school record in that event as the Panthers got four points.

Pikesville’s final three points came on eighth-place finishes in three separate races.

Plotkin did it in the 3,200, and Shearer did the same in the 800. Starobin set a school mark with her eighth-place finish in the 1,600.