Saturday was the first time Bishop Stang senior Jacob Cookinham’s competed in the New England Championships, but not for the same reason as most of the meet’s other new competitors.
Cookinham, the best high school shot put thrower in the nation and the consensus favorite to win the event at next week’s New Balance Nationals in Brighton, had skipped the regional competition in previous years to focus on upcoming national meets.
But Cookinham chose to embrace the event this year, and dropped a monster 67-foot-3-inch throw to earn the New England shot put crown Saturday at Reggie Lewis Track and Athletic Center.
“It’s my senior year, and I want to leave a legacy for the high school, and other athletes coming after me,” Cookinham said. “So I thought, ‘You know what? This is a great meet to come and compete in, and I can be New England champion.’ ”
Though Saturday’s first-place result was never in much doubt for Cookinham, the Kansas signee will have stronger competition at nationals next week. Still, his personal-best throw is 4 feet better than the country’s next-best competitor, and he used the regional meet as a tune-up.
“It was a test for next week, and the test went great,” Cookinham said of his performance Saturday. “It’ll be even better next week.”
Lowell senior Ronnie Jones was disappointed with her second-place finish in the girls’ shot put at last Saturday’s MIAA Meet of Champions (40-3¾), but she rebounded with an improved effort (40-11) good for first place and the New England title.
“Since the summer, I wanted to win my Meet of Champions, so to come away with second it was a bummer,” Jones said. “But as soon as I got over that initial loss, I actually learned a lot more from losing that meet than I would have winning.”
But, unlike Cookinham and Jones, many of Massachusetts’s top athletes chose to forego Saturday’s meet with an eye toward nationals. The absence of local stars was partially why Cookinham and Jones were the lone Massachusetts competitors to finish first in the meet’s combined 26 boys’ and girls’ events.
Brookline’s Camille Jordan and Jordan Liss-Riordan were among those who didn’t run their individual events, but both were part of the Warriors’ 4x800-meter relay (9:15.25), which was the fifth-fastest time in the country this season and 12 seconds better than the quartet’s season best. Despite the impressive time, Brookline finished a distant second to Glastonbury, Conn., which registered the country’s third-best mark this year (9:05.41).
Though Brookline’s streak of first-place finishes in the event was snapped, squaring off with elite out-of-state competition is precisely why they wanted to compete in the regional meet to begin with.
“The teams in Massachusetts are great, but I think we haven’t necessarily always been pushed to our fullest,” Liss-Riordan said. “Here, competing against another top team in the country, I think it really pushed us to be better. And that really showed in our splits.”
The Brookline boys’ 4x800 squad also competed ahead of nationals, earning second place with a season-best time (7:54.36.)
Newton South’s Amelia Everett dominated the 1,000 last week at the Meet of Champions (2:51.60), and improved upon her personal best by two seconds (2:49.56). However, she wound up finishing runner-up to Sophia Gorriaran, a Harvard commit from Providence, who set the afternoon’s lone meet record (2:46.45).
“I don’t think [the PR] was because I had someone to chase,” said Everett, who will compete in the 800 at nationals. “It was more just like ‘I got to go,’ which I tried to do last week, but it’s always different when you have people right around you.”
Matty Wasserman can be reached at matty.wasserman@globe.com. Follow him @Matty_Wasserman.