2011: Year in sports

By JOSH KAUFMANN | Sports Editor
josh@samessenger.com

The Yellowjackets’ girls soccer team brought an end to a spectacular four-year run and welcomed new varsity coach Cory Payson to the program in style, winning its third state championship in four years to highlight the 2011 sports year at Milton High School.

Four-year starters Jenna Morrissey, Gina Abiatti and Samantha Rock led Milton at least as far as the Division II championship game each fall, and the Yellowjackets closed out a dominant 2011 season with a sweep of their four playoff games with 18 goals scored and just one allowed. Rock set the school record for career goals with her fifth of the day in Milton’s 8-0 first-round rout of Green Mountain Valley.

The team’s lone loss came to Division I finalist South Burlington in its season-opener, and only Champlain Valley Union — which beat South Burlington for that title — earned as much as a tie against the Yellowjackets the rest of the fall.

Milton’s championship was its fifth all-time in girls soccer.

Milton earned several individual state championships in 2011 as well, thanks to a strong performance from the girls track and field team.

Junior Karleigh Manfredi beat her own state record for Division II (set just two weeks earlier) while winning the pole vault for the second year in a row. Freshman Brooke Phillips scored 26 of the team’s 79 points with a state title in the 200 meters and runner-up finishes in the pole vault and 100. Phillips also ran on the second-place 4x100 relay team with Rock, Manfredi and Sha’kylah Morris for another eight points. Rock had a big day with a first (300 hurdles), second (400) and third (long jump), and Hannah Fraser was second in the triple jump.

Maxwell Curtiss earned a state title in the 800 meters, and Kevin Mongeon gave Milton a pole vault sweep with a win in the boys event. Scott Hitchcox earned a pair of second-place finishes, in the 800 and 1500.

In cross country this fall, the Yellowjackets got some great efforts in the state championships at Thetford from two seniors when their usual top runners were slowed by injury. Team leaders Scott Hitchcox and Annika Seifert were Milton’s top runners all fall, with Hitchcox a contender to finish in the top 25 overall and earn a trip to the New England Championships. In the state meet at Thetford, though, Hitchcox was done in by a cramp after a strong start, but Nathan Fleming turned in a great race and finished 22nd to lead the team. With Seifert hampered late in the season by an ankle injury, veteran runner Lydia Pelsor had the Yellowjackets’ top finish in 41st. Fleming ran an impressive 2 minutes, 28 seconds faster than he had a year earlier at Thetford, and Pelsor was 37 seconds better in her last state meet.

Other fall teams had significant successes large and small.

The boys soccer team was hurt by a hard-luck start, with four losses and a tie in a string of overtime battles to open the season. A strong finish earned a home playoff opener but sent the Yellowjackets down Route 7 to take on No. 1 seed Burr & Burton in the quarterfinals. Milton nearly pulled off a huge upset in that match but lost 1-0 on a late goal to the Bulldogs, who went on to win the Division II title.

Milton’s rebuilding field hockey team snapped a long winless streak with a dramatic victory over Lyndon Institute, rallying from an first-half deficit to get its first win on Mary Rowley’s overtime goal. After losing seven of their first eight games, along with a tie at Lyndon in the teams’ first meeting, the Yellowjackets finished with a strong run, adding a victory over North Country and earning two more ties — including a scoreless draw with defending Division III state champion Rice — in its next five games to finish the regular season.

In football, a red-hot start had Milton in the running for the top seed in the Division II playoffs. But after reeling off seven straight victories, the Yellowjackets ran into a brutal stretch of scheduling with back-to-back losses against Division I Colchester and then-unbeaten North Country, setting up a first-round playoff game against a Fair Haven team that would go on to win the D-II state championship.

Milton’s boys also ran into some tough match ups in boys playoffs in the spring and winter. The basketball squad finished eighth in the D-II standings and gave eventual title-winner Missisquoi its toughest battle of the post-season, but the team couldn’t quite pull off an upset in Swanton. The baseball team avoided a playoff meeting with MVU, the crown-owner in that sport, but the No. 16 seed had to open up at Burr & Burton, the other D-II state finalist.

The Yellowjacket girls also went out in the first round in basketball and softball, though the softball team first showed signs of a promising future by battling BFA-St. Albans — undefeated in the regular season in Division I and the state runner-up — in one of the best games of the year in any sport.

On the ice, Milton’s boys hockey team had a solid regular season with a 7-11-1 record but had to open the playoffs on the road and fell to Northfield in the first round, 5-3.