NASHUA, N.H. – Manchester Memorial’s Thomas Gerton took fourth place in this weekend’s 63rd Annual New Hampshire State Decathlon and Heptathlon with a final score of 4867.
Gerton stood in 17th place after Saturday’s first five events, buoyed by a 55.03” finish in the 400-meter race, good enough for seventh place in that event.
He gained more ground with a top-ten finish in the discus with a mark of 28.9 m leading into his strongest event: the pole vault.
Finishing third in the pole vault at the NHIAA Division I Outdoor State Championships last month, Gerton managed another third-place finish here despite the rainy conditions.
Although his mark of 3.51m was a tenth of a meter short of last month’s result at those championships, but still only lagged behind Jacob Pacheco (3.66m) and Chris Mood (3.96m).
That result provided Gerton with 485 points in the event, putting him into the top-ten overall, and a strong 35.06m finish in the javelin kept his momentum going.
However, it was his sixth-place finish in the 1500-meter race that put him into the top-five overall. His 4:46.62 time there was only 15 seconds behind event winner Maxim Merkuryev.
He narrowly outpaced Memorial teammate Ryan Kenny (4:47.8), with Kenny’s result enough to give him a sixth-place result overall with a total score of 4774.
Other Memorial finishers included Sebastian Ruge (3524, 30th place), Justin Discua (3428, 35th place), Ryan Wood (3244, 39th place), Dennis Kotee (3150, 42nd place), Johnathan Casoni (2362, 58th place), and Basil High (2068, 61st place).
The decathlon was won by Merrimack Valley’s Dylan Lessard with a score of 5478.
Three Memorial athletes participated in the heptathlon, with Lela Connors finishing in 17th place (2861 points), Jordan Velie finishing in 41st place (1966 points), and Chloe Rich finishing in 55th place (1277 points.)
