MATTAPOISETT — The Old Rochester Regional High School boys varsity track team has a new title under its belt. 

The team was named Division 4 state champions at the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association Div. 4 track meet on Wednesday, Feb. 15 with a score of 43 points. 

According to Head Coach Bill Tilden, state championships were not the team’s main focus during the season. 

“Our focus was really the South Coast Conference championship,” he said. Tilden said that the team refocused their goals after a loss to Greater New Bedford Regional Vocational Technical High School.

According to Tilden, the loss against New Bedford was the teams only loss of the season. 

“[New Bedford Voc] had some phenomenal sprinters, we have a few but they had more,” said Tilden referring to the loss. 

But that did not stop the Old Rochester Regional High School boys track team.

They beat out second and third place finishers Newburyport and North Reading. This is the team’s first Div. 4 state championship win since 2017.

“We thought realistically to place maybe third to fifth [place] because there was some such such strong teams in there,” Tilden said. 

According to Tilden, the team the meet off strong with two team members placing in hurdles and two placing in the mile. 

“We were saving a lot of kids for the relays at the end because we thought that was our best opportunity for those kids to move on,” he said.

Despite one of their fastest runners, Wesner Archelus, being out with an injury and coming in 10th place during the four by four hundred meters relay, quick times in following relays pushed the team toward their goal. 

Tilden was especially impressed by Archelus’s fill-in John Bowman. 

“He went out so fast that I thought for sure that he was going to completely run out of gas. He did an amazing job, he ran a personal record by over six seconds,” said Tilden. 

In addition to the boys’s state championship win, Tilden also two girls who both placed in the New Balance National Championships. 

According to Tilden, freshman Delilah Post ran 149.17 seconds in the 600 meter relay. In addition to placing in the national championship, sophomore Audrey Thomas broke a school record with her time of 42.83 seconds in the 300 meter relay.