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Rain doesn’t slow athletes at State Decathlon-Heptathlon

By Andrew Sylvia - For The Telegraph | Jun 16, 2019

NASHUA – A rainy Sunday could stop the 63rd Annual New Hampshire State Decathlon and Heptathlon, which concluded a set of strong results from several Nashua-area student athletes.

In the heptathlon, Bow’s Dominque Biron scored the most points for the third time in the last four years, finishing with 4,337 points.

Biron finished in the top three in six of the seven events, still posting a respectable 2:36.08 in the 800 meters, good enough for seventh place.

This was the fifth time Biron participated in the event, and this year she participated as an exhibition invitee, making Nashua South’s Sydney Lewis the defacto winner with 3,782 points.

Lewis has posted the second most points now at the state heptathlon for the past three years, finishing third before that.

Her best result came in 2018 with a score of 4,043, just 37 points behind overall winner Kristina Allard of Sanborn.

Lewis was satisfied with her final day as a high school athlete, voicing praise for her rival, frustration over a slightly disappointing second day and relief that it’s all over.

“I’m sad that this my last hepathlon at the school, so there’s a lot of emotion,” she said.

“(Biron) is a great competitor, she’s a beast. It’s been a crazy weekend.”

Nashua North’s Olivia Mazzerolle notched top ten results in six of the seven events to finish just behind Lewis with a total of 3,527 points. Alvirne’s Skyler Bomba also placed in the top 10 overall with a final tally of 3,407 points.

On the boys’ side, Nashua South’s Paul Marchand could have finished victorious overall if he had finished the 1,500-meter race just five seconds faster. However, he finished the day’s final event with a time of 5:05.94, not enough to overcome decathlon winner Dylan Lessard of Merrimack Valley.

Both Lessard and Marchand cleared 2.90 meters on the pole vault, but Lessard bested Marchand in Sunday’s other four events, finishing fifth in the 1500-meters with a time of 4:45.12. That result put Lessard in the top ten for every event in the competition except for the long jump, where he placed 16th.

Still, Marchand led going into the 1,500 and seemed poised to emerge victorious despite a long jump result where he thought he didn’t grab as many points as he needed.

“I was really trying to push this weekend, I pushed in everything,” he said. “I’m pretty disappointed, I’m not going to lie, I was expecting to finish first. But I only lost by about 30 points, so I can look forward to another year.”

South teammate Maxim Merkuryev placed 10th overall, accumulating 715 more points than he did last year. Murkuryev took his second first-place event finish on Sunday, defeating 68 other competitors in the 1,500-meter race with a time of 4:31.06

NHIAA Division I Javelin champion Jacob Pacheco of Bishop Guertin finished 11th overall, winning the javelin event on Sunday with a mark of 43.33 meters.

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