Westford’s Jack Graffeo breaks mile record at Freshman-Sophomore meet – Boston Herald
It mattered little to Jack Graffeo that he was racing the mile on just five days of training at Saturday’s Auerbach Freshman-Sophomore Large School Invitational.
With a personal best of 4:22 from last year, he had every intention of making a run at Franklin’s Tyler Brogan’s meet record of 4 minutes, 26.75 seconds set in 2018.
Tall and known as a super hard finisher, Graffeo bolted through the opening 800 in 2:10 and pushed his way through the tape to decimate the field and break Brogan’s mark in 4:26.50. The time was all the more impressive by the Westford Academy sophomore given that he has been battling a shin injury since the cross country season.
“It’s a good stepping stone in the right direction,” said Graffeo. “I had it (the record) in mind and I definitely wanted to give it a shot. I wanted to go out in 63 or 64 (seconds) and do what I could to get the record.”
Training with the likes of teammate and Div. 1 All-State champion Paul Bergeron and a strong core group of distance runners, Graffeo is confident he’ll run faster through the spring.
“I feel like there’s a lot of speed work to be done,” he said. “We have a great running environment and we all push each other.”
Wellesley’s terrific distance runners, Charlotte and Emily Tuxbury, ran together early in the mile before Charlotte switched gears at the 800 and sprinted home for a personal best 5:10.74. Emma was second, also establishing a personal best of 5:13.40, and Cambridge’s Aoife Shovlin took third in 5:15.20.
“We wanted to push each other,” said Charlotte. “I definitely felt like I saved a little too much earlier in the race. It was pretty smooth early and we definitely worked together.”
The Tuxbury sisters’ teammate, Annie Comella, copped a pair of gold medals in individual events. The sophomore talented outleaped Gabrielle Pierre of Lincoln-Sudbury with a 17-9-3/4 effort. Pierre took silver with her 17-2-3/4 effort.
Comella warmed up by turning away a strong field in the 55 with a very quick, season best of 7.33.
“I felt pretty confident about it,” said Comella. “My start was OK. My start in the preliminaries was definitely better.”
Daniel Killian of Winchester was “locked in” in the 55 final and used a strong final 20 meters to pull ahead for the win in a personal best of 6.63, edging out Mansfield’s Myles Brown (6.68).
Killian has been working especially hard on his starts out of the blocks and believes he is ahead of pace from last year.
“As of late, the’ve (starts) been going good,” he said. “I really want to improve on my flexibility. I’m not as fluid as I’d like to be.”
Weymouth’s Gracie Richard was just short of the meet record in the 1,000 with her 3:00.80 and Newton South’s Alex Friedman surged hard down the backstretch to pull away for the win in 2:37.53.