Editor’s note: The Sun Journal sports staff voted on the area’s top sports stories of 2023 and will be counting down the top 10 through the end of the year.
Lewiston’s Makenna Drouin leads during the 100-meter hurdles event at the Class A track and field state championships in June at Mt. Ararat High School in Topsham. Drouin won the 100 hurdles state title for the second straight time and also claimed her third consecutive 300 hurdles state championship at the meet. Andree Kehn/Sun Journal
Makenna Drouin continued to dominate hurdles and sprints in 2023, winning state titles and setting school records in indoor and outdoor track and field.
In November, she signed a National Letter of Intent to compete at NCAA Division I Elon University next year.
Early in 2023, Drouin won a state title in the 55-meter hurdles at the Class A indoor state championships and set Edward Little program records in the 55 hurdles (8.43 seconds) and 200-meter dash (26.38). She already owned the 55 dash record prior to her junior season, and came within two-hundredths of a second of tying that mark in 2023.
“I’d say, historically speaking, what has made Makenna’s achievements so special is that most athletes don’t break one school record throughout their four-year high school career, let alone several of them,” Edward Little indoor track and field coach Angie Jalbert said in March when Drouin was named the Sun Journal All-Region Girls Indoor Track Athlete of the Year.
Drouin transferred to Lewiston for the outdoor season and finished first in all of the regular season meets for 100-meter dash, 100 hurdles and 300 hurdles. She won the 200 dash three times.
She set personal records in the 100 dash (11.89 seconds), 200 (24.85 seconds) and 100 hurdles (14.65) at the River City Rivals meet in May. Her 100 dash PR came when she went head-to-head with, and beat, eventual state champion Anna Connors of Bangor.
Drouin also claimed the Class A state title in the 300 hurdles for the third consecutive year and the 100 hurdles title for the second year in a row. Additionally, she was the runner-up in the 100- and 200-meter dashes at the state meet.
But that’s not all — Drouin also set school records in all four events. She was later selected as the Sun Journal Girls Track and Field Athlete of the Year for the second year in a row.
Drouin is so fast in the hurdles and sprints that not many Maine high school athletes can challenge her in the sprints and hurdles. That’s one of the things she’s most looking forward to about racing at the college level.
“I’m excited to get more competition than I do around here,” Drouin said on her signing day in November. “I traveled some over the summer to get some competition, and that (competition) was good for girls I went against — they don’t get much, either.”
Drouin said she is expecting to run all four events at Elon.
She has been especially dominant in the 300 hurdles. In August, she said that she was initially reluctant to run the event, but finally gave into the encouragement of one of the Edward Little coaches during her freshman season.
Drouin placed second the first time she ran the 300 hurdles, and that race, she said, “brought a passion out of me toward this event and track.”
Following the 2023 outdoor season, Drouin went on to run in the New England championships, New Balance Nationals, USATF Region One Junior Olympics Championship and the USATF Junior Olympic Championship.
She added the 400-meter hurdles to her docket for this past summer’s national meets, placing first at the Region One Junior Olympic championships with a time of 1:04.86, 25th at New Balance Nationals and 13th at the national Junior Olympic Championship.
Lewiston’s indoor and outdoor track coach Craig John told the Sun Journal in August that Bates College assistant Art Feeley once told him that athletes of Drouin’s caliber “come along, if you’re lucky, once in a coaching career.”
“… It’s very rare to have somebody with her just natural ability and natural speed,” John said.
Earlier this month, Drouin began her senior season of indoor track by setting two Lewiston program records, running the 55-meter dash in 7.30 seconds and the 200 in 26.32 seconds.
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