It was yet another eventful season for our MA track & field athletes. Throughout the summer months, Bay State Running will feature some of our most memorable performances during the outdoor campaign. Here we feature Westford Academy’s Abigail Hennessy.
The most exciting part? She still has one more year to go. With plenty of races ahead, the Hennessy still has the chance to do something truly special — not just at the state level, but on the national stage as well.
While her junior campaign didn’t start off as planned with an injury wiping out nearly all of her cross-country season and much of indoor track, the Westford Academy standout made the most of her talent once healthy. It all began at the New Balance Nationals back in March where Hennessy dominated the unseeded section of the mile and raced to a then PR of 4:42.72. A pair of impressive runner-up finishes – 4:40.01 at the Penn Relays Carnival and a 4:40.76 at the BSR Elite Scholastic Mile – would only act as a prequel of what to expect when the championship season rolled around. After defending her mile and 800m crowns at the Div. 1 Championships and the Meet of Champions (MOC), Hennessy delivered her biggest performance yet. Lining up against the nation’s best at the New Balance Nationals in mid-June, she proved she belonged, placing third overall with a record-setting PR of 4:34.69. The astonishing effort shattered her own state record of 4:37.11 — a mark she had set just 12 days earlier at the MOC.
