The varsity boys’ track and field team won the Marin County Athletic League finals on May 14 at Novato High School, coach Kevin Engle’s 12th Marin County Athletic League championship  in his 22 years as a track and field coach.

Tam and Marin Catholic were neck and neck throughout the meet, until seniors Orion Siu  and Chip Moore, sophomore Mesgna Neghasi, and Freshman Lucas Affelteranger won the final event, the four by four hundred meter race, to seal the meet for Tam.

“Everybody came together, everyone was really into the meet, they performed at a really high level,” Engle said, “[I] Couldn’t be more proud of the guys.”  He also mentioned the performances all season long by a pair of top scorers, seniors Orion Siu and Chip Moore, and how they pushed the team to new levels.  “We pretty much dominated every meet we went to, and once again it was always a complete team effort, it was outstanding.”

“Overall I’d say it was a tremendous team effort,” Moore said. “No single person could have lost the meet for us because we just had so many incredible individual performances.”

Siu agreed. “[We] had a great season this year,” he said. “We finished 9-0…It was a huge team effort and we had somebody  [score in the top six and] score in every event except one. We had plenty of great performances and many athletes have put their marks on the Tam All-Time top ten list this season.”

For track and field seniors like Moore and Siu, an Marin County Athletic League banner is exactly how they wanted to cap off four years of hard work.

Sophomore high jumper Noah Haynesworth hopes to follow in their footsteps.  “It must be an incredible feeling winning it all in your last year of high school. All of my teammates work so hard.”

Coach Engle also pointed out that there are many junior varsity athletes that  are varsity ready, and the girls’ varsity team also has a lot of young talent.

“The [junior varsity] boys lost one meet this year and we’re bringing a lot of the [junior varsity] boys up to varsity, so they helped us at the Marin County Athletic League final, and our girls team is going to be really good next year too.”