West Springfield's Nicole Lipka Makes School History at Regionals

Nicole Lipka of West Springfield became the first girl in school history to advance to the VHSL AAA state indoor track meet in pole vault after her sixth-place finish in the Northern Region meet at George Mason University Saturday.

“It was nice. All those years of work, for them to finally pay off at that level, was pretty nice,” remarked Spartan head coach Chris Pellegrini when asked about Lipka’s historic performance. Lena Nelson also qualified for states in the shot put, finishing sixth in the event. Nelson threw a personal best 34-06.25.

The Spartan girls finished ninth overall with 27.50 points while the boys finished nineteenth overall with seven points.

In the long-distance events, Maddie Wittich and Colin Taylor both qualified for states. Wittich, a sophomore, finished second in the girls 1600-meter run. Taylor, who ran a personal best 4:25:10, finished fourth in the boys 1600-meter.

The big surprise of the day occurred with the girls 4x400 relay (Kim Boeckmann, Alexis McEntire, Michelle Lipka, Nicole Lipka) team. The team originally finished fourth in the event, which meant that they would not qualify for states. However, upon further examination, it was determined that South County, which had finished third, had a runner who stepped into a Robinson’s runner’s lane, cutting her off, which resulted in a disqualification.

As a result, West Springfield moved into third place which qualified them for states.

“I felt like we had a pretty good day. I really felt like more things happened to go our way in the meet.” Pellegrini said. “We knew that we were on the fringe on a number of events, but I felt more went our way than didn’t. Whenever something like that happens, you feel like you win the coin toss more times than you don’t. We’re pretty excited.”