The final local track meet of the 2025 season was held at Mt. Carmel High School last weekend with four Islander girls qualifying for the State Meet that’s held in Clovis, CA on May 30-31. The four girls going hold five school records. During the season, the school 4×100 relay, the 4×400 relay, the Sprint Medley relay, the 100 meter dash, and the 200 meter dash records were broken. Head Coach Cameron Gary supplies us with the details below.
The Islander Track & Field team qualified eight athletes into the 2025 San Diego CIF Section Championships, held on May 24 at Mt. Carmel high school. The Section championships were formerly known as “CIF Finals” as this encompasses the top 18 Division championship qualifiers from throughout the entire San Diego CIF Section. It also serves as the final competition to determine the CIF Section champion and qualifiers for the 2025 California State Championships (State Meet), to be held in Clovis on May 30 and 31.
To qualify for the State Meet, athletes and relay teams must finish in the top three positions in the Section Championship or achieve the automatic qualifying standard in this competition. The automatic qualifying standard is based on the average 9th place finisher in the three previous State Meets (essentially a State Finalist performance). The only exception is (currently) the 4×800 Relay, as it is a relatively new event and does not have three prior years of performance results to set an automatic standard. Consequently, only the top TWO 4×800 places qualify for the State Meet.
The Islander qualifiers for the San Diego Section Championships were senior Lauren Gilhooly (Girls 100m Dash, 200m Dash, 4×100 Relay, 4×400 Relay), junior Micaela Gistaro and sophomore Maya Wilson (Girls 400m Dash, 4×100 Relay, 4×400 Relay), junior Nathan Ayan (Boys 800m Run, 4×800 Relay), junior Summer Little (Girls 4×100 Relay, 4×400 Relay), junior Andrew Buck, senior Jack Letcher, junior Vincent Russo, and senior Austin Litteral (Boys 4×800 Relay).
The Islander girls (Gistaro, Gilhooly, Wilson and Little) got off to a strong start by placing second in the 4×100 Relay and equaling their season’s best (and school record) time of 47.69 seconds. As a result, the Islander girls qualified for the State Meet. This is the first Islander 4×100 Relay team to do so. The Islanders ran a strong race but fell to a Steele Canyon HS squad that broke the CIF Section Championship meet record. The Islander girls finished well ahead of all the other teams in the section.
Gilhooly also qualified for the State Meet by placing 3rd in the Girls 100m Dash. She overcame a mechanical malfunction with her starting blocks, as there was a broken block pedal that necessitated meet management placing someone behind her blocks to hold/stabilize her rear block pedal. Despite this, Gilhooly was still able to run 11.76 seconds, which is only 6/100 if a second off her wind-legal best time of 11.70 seconds. Even if Gilhooly hadn’t finished in the top three of her events, her time was still fast enough to be an automatic qualifier. Gilhooly was unable to qualify for State Meet in the 200 however, as she finished in 5th position with a time of 24.93 seconds.
Ayan ran 1:59.40 while finishing in 13th place in the Boys 800m Run. Gistaro finished 15th in the Girls 400m Dash with a time of 59.63 seconds. The Boys 4×800 Relay (Russo, Buck, Letcher and Litteral) finished 17th with a time of 8:40.43. One of the girls in the 4×400 Relay sustained a minor injury. As a result, we scratched that event to preserve this athlete so she could recover and be ready to compete next weekend in the 4×100 Relay (the same girls constitute both relay team lineups).
Congratulations to the Islanders!!