The members of the local track club Dude Guy Bro Hey are All-Americans.
Northampton High School’s boys sprint medley relay of Cole Lavalle, Patrick Quinlan, Nik Smith and Ben Gordon-Sniffen made school history on Saturday.
The group placed sixth in the championship field at New Balance Nationals Indoor, held at The Armory in New York City.
Their finish in 3 minutes, 32.94 seconds awarded them All-American status. The time was a school record and the achievement was a first for a relay at Northampton.
“I don’t think the guys knew (they could do it) but you see the proof at practice,” Hamp coach Brandon Palmer said. “They’re all-stars. They all race each other.”
And the track club name?
Northampton qualified for the national meet in January, and when Palmer registered the team for nationals, they were not sanctioned at the time to use the Northampton name. On Thursday, Palmer said the school committee gave them the OK to use the name. While the team had “Hamp” jerseys, they stuck with the DGBH label.
“We let the boys choose the name and that’s what they went with. It’s everything the guys represent,” Palmer said. “A dude started the relay and passed it to a guy, then a bro and, hey.”
Not much was expected from Dude Guy Bro Hey, which was seeded last among 24 teams.
But starting in Lane 2 of the first heat, Northampton exploded.
“We didn’t have high expectations,” Palmer said. “It was no pressure. We let them be as loose as possible and they had great energy at the meet.”
The format called for back-to-back 200-meter dashes, which Lavalle and Quinlan combined to cover in 46.43 seconds. Smith took the baton and covered the 400 in 49.36 seconds. Gordon-Sniffen closed with a 1:57.16 800.
“The race itself was incredible,” Palmer said. “We were out by 15-20 meters going into the final lap. Lincoln-Sudbury rolled up and sat on Ben. I don’t know where Ben got it, but he had a little left.”
Lincoln-Sudbury finished eighth in 3:33.11.
The other three teams in the heat finished 18th (Immaculate), 21st (Rahway) and 23rd (Huntington).
“After we had finish the race they had announced that our time was the third fastest in the nation at that point,” Palmer said. “It hit me like what did we just do.”
It also left Northampton watching as four other heats were scheduled to run.
“You feel every human emotion for 20 minutes,” Palmer said. “It’s going all the way up and down. It’s a huge swing.”
Motor City TC of Michigan won the event in 3:25.31.
When the unofficial results came out, Northampton was seventh and on the outside looking in at All-American.
However, Trenton Central (New Jersey), which had the second-fastest time of 3:27.14, was disqualified for an exchange zone violation.
This pulled Northampton, which edged seventh-place Union Catholic (New Jersey) by 0.04 seconds, into sixth.
Quinlan was the first to find out.
“Pat was going nuts,” Palmer said. “He was saying ‘We got 6. We got 6. We got All-American.’”
Smith also competed in the championship field of the 200 dash. He was 23rd in 22.07 seconds and did not advance to the finals.
Amherst Regional missed finding the podium in the 4×800 boys emerging elite field by almost 1 second. Jack Yanko, Julian Fisher Frank, Andre Shepard and Aidan Foucault Etheridge finished in 8:01.54.
Adrenaline (Delaware) was sixth in 8:00.56.
Amherst sophomore Sophia Jacobs-Townsley was 15th in the girls emerging elite 2-mile in 11:05.74.