State Champion Spotlight: Abby Hamilton (Yarmouth HS)

State Champion spotlight: Abby Hamilton (Yarmouth HS)

What were your preparations leading up to the state meet?

My mileage decreased slightly, and I tried to focus more on recovery in preparation for the state meet.

How did you deal with the pressure and emotions that come along with competing in a state meet?

I honestly was not that nervous for the state meet until everyone lined up on the starting line. I think that having an extremely stressful cross country season made me realize that I needed to just relax more and enjoy the rest of the time that I had to run in high school. Also, I have amazing teammates, so it was a fun distraction to cheer for those who were competing.

It looked like in the 2 mile you had a plan to go out with the pack for the first few laps, and then take off. Was that the plan?

My coach and I came up with the plan to wait until about 600 meters and then just make a really decisive move. We started pretty slow, so I think that everyone was waiting for someone to take the lead. Obviously, Tia had already accomplished an absolutely incredible double earlier, and both Carolyn and Katherine had each run an amazing mile, so I thought my best chance was to go early and make sure that the race was not decided on who had the fastest kick at the end.

Once you broke away, how did you stay focused on keeping the fast pace? What did it mean to beat such a talented field?

Of course, it's always more difficult to stay focused on a particular pace when you are running by yourself. However, I had a lot of people encouraging me and telling me how much space I had after each lap. I just wanted to maintain some distance so that the last few laps weren't too stressful.

The 2 mile did include some really amazing girls. Although a lot of them had raced earlier that day, I still feel very fortunate that I was able to keep up with them during the race. Last year, I finished sixth with a time that was about 39 seconds slower. Therefore, I'm just really grateful that I have been able to see improvement and can compete with some really talented distance runners.

Coming into the season what were your goals and did you achieve them?

I wasn't really close to any of my time goals that I wanted to achieve this year. However, winning a state title is clearly always an important goal for any season. 

How do you think winning an individual state title will effect you heading into outdoors?

Winning a state title is always a relief, but it's important to move on and start looking towards future goals. I just hope that I can improve my times during outdoor. I want to get as close to the 11-minute barrier for the 3,200m as I can. Also, we have some really fast girls from the cross country team coming out for outdoor, so hopefully that will make Yarmouth track more competitive as a team at the outdoor state meet in June.

Will you be competing in track at the college level next year?

I will be running cross country and track at Bates College next year.

Hamilton's 2 Mile Progression

2016-17 Indoor Performances