There were two track meets last week, a hand-timed cluster at Clairemont High School and the Mt. Carmel Invitational. The two couldn’t be further apart in terms of competition. It’s hard to get into Mt. Carmel, and the athletes we did get in performed very well.
Head coach Cameron Gary details the two events below.
3/21 League Meet – Kearny, LMEC, Clairemont
The Islanders met the Kearny HS Komets and the Clairemont HS Chieftains at Clairemont HS on March 17. As Clairemont did not have a fully automatic timing system (FAT), this posed some minor challenges. So the times from the running events are considered “hand” timed. The main challenge with this is that non-FAT times are not accepted as qualifying performances in most invitational and championship meets, nor are they considered for local, state, or national rankings. Consequently, we opted to move many of our athletes around to events they don’t normally run.
All the Coronado relay teams were victorious. Unfortunately, the varsity boys 4×100 relay team was disqualified for passing out of the zone. The varsity girls 4×100 team of senior Tatiana Potter, junior Lauren Gilhooly, senior Lindsey Balsley, and sophomore Summer Little won convincingly with a time of 50.1 seconds. That same quartet teamed up to win the 4×400 in a time of 4:17.5.
The varsity boys 4×400 Relay of senior Marco Velarde, junior Jace Larson, sophomore Nathan Ayan, and junior Sean Groeneveld won convincingly with a time of 3:36.5.
Sophomore standout Ayan won the boys varsity 800m Run with a time of 2:14.5. He was closely followed by senior Rafael Roos in a time of 2:15.0. Freshman Xavier Marsh and sophomore Oscar Alicandri notched PR times of 2:21.6 and 2:31.8, respectively.
Senior Lindsey Balsley ran her first hurdles race of the season, winning the girls 300m Hurdles in a time of 47.2 seconds. Unfortunately, the meet management inadvertently left off the last flight of hurdles, so the athletes cleared seven hurdles instead of eight. This, along with the hand-timing issue precluded her time from being a PR. Nonetheless, this was still a good performance.
In the sprint events, sophomore Davin Collins, junior David Castillo, and senior Marco Velarde swept the top three places in the 100m Dash. Their times were 12.0, 12.2, and 12.3, respectively.
In the jump events, senior Emily Fernandez notched a PR of 15’4″ while winning the girl’s long jump. And junior Jackson Rohrs-Frazier won the boys high jump with a leap of 5’6″.
All our varsity throwers notched PRs in their respective events. In the Shot Put, sophomore Eddie Gonzalez, junior Jeanpierre Resendes, and sophomore Garret Shumaker threw 29’10.5″, 27’11”, and 27’7.75″ respectively. In the Discus, their finishing orders were Gonzalez, Shumaker and Resendes, with throw distances of 91’5″, 86’6″, and 77’9″, respectively.
3/23 Mt. Carmel/Sundevil Invitational
The Islanders qualified eleven athletes for this year’s edition of this meet. There were five athletes qualified in individual events, in addition to three relays. The meet started off well, however the weather turned sour toward the middle of the meet because of rainstorms. Mt. Carmel has an all-weather track, so the meet continued despite the rain. We competed in most of the events but opted to not contest the girls 200m Dash or 4×400 Relay due to the conditions.
Our distance athletes, senior Rafael Roos and sophomore Nathan Ayan performed very well. Roos, while running in the fast heat of the boys 800, ran a PR time of 1:58.35 to place second overall. He also beat all the runners in the race from San Diego section high schools. Roos is currently the #1 ranked 800m runner in the City League.
Ayan ran two PRs, starting off with 4:36.34 in the 1600m Run, then doubling back in the 800m Run with a time of 2:01.57. Ayan currently ranks #2 in the City League in both those events.
In the sprint events, junior Lauren Gilhooly equaled her PR of 11.88s in the 100m Dash, finishing second in the fast heat. The girls’ 4×100 relay team of senior Tatiana Potter, Gilhooly, junior Lindsey Balsley, and sophomore Summer Little finished second in their heat (10th overall) with a season’s best time of 50.02s. That time ranks them #1 in the City League and within the Top Ten in the San Diego CIF section.
Many more photos of all our meets as well as a schedule are at IslanderTrack.com
