After a few cooler days mid-week, the heat returned on Thursday for the meet.  Much like our first meet this past Saturday, we had temperatures in the low 80s, but were lucky enough to get some cloud cover for most of the meet.  The wind was a bit stronger as was the pollen and humidity.  Combine that weather with the fact that this was an after-school meet and boys are usually a bit more depleted, the fact that we had 16 personal bests and 5 elite performances was pretty impressive.  We could still use some work on getting a bit more focused on our events and making sure the proper warm-up and cool-down procedures are happening.

 

Half of our personal bests came in the field events with four of our five discus throwers earning a PR along with both of our high jumpers.  Charlie Branch picked up the lone long jump PR, by almost a foot!  Jassen Jordan was the lone shotput PR, improving by almost six feet in his season debut!  In the discus, Langdon Sexton improved by over two feet and broke the 60-foot barrier for the first time.  Jayden Addei had close to an 8-foot PR, just 8 inches from the 60-foot mark.  Gabe Wyatt had over an 8-foot PR while Miko Aboutanos also squeaked out a PR.  In the high jump, Palmer Telfian had a one inch PR (4-6) and Jayden had a two inch PR, clearing 4-10.  He also had a good final attempt at 5-0, clearing the bar on height, but not having enough momentum toward the back of the mat to keep the bar on the standards.  Although Corbett Kessel was a few inches short of his best long jump, he still earned an elite performance by once again clearing the 16-foot mark.

 

In the running events, Palmer had a huge PR in the 100, dropping over 2 seconds.  Jayden also picked up his 3rd PR of the day, despite being the only STC guy in 5 events.  Emmanuel Moore dropped .6 seconds from his best 200, but more importantly, earned his first elite performance and now ranks 34th all-time STC MS in the 200.  Much like Emmanuel in the 200, we only had 1 PR in the 400 and that was a 2.5 second drop from Jeb Jernigan.  In the 1600, we had a pair of 7.5-second PRs as Miko almost broke 7:00 for the first time (7:04) and Langdon improved his already elite performance time.  Langdon's 5:11.68 ranks him 18th on the STC MS all-time list.  The event that yielded 2 NEPRs this meet was the 300 Hurdles.  Earlier in the week, Corbett and Palmer expressed interest in trying the 300 hurdles, which features 8 hurdles at 36" (3 feet).  After a Coach Robinson tutorial and a few more days to work on their form, Corbett and Palmer took to the track yesterday and had pretty good debuts, with both breaking 1:00.  In the relays, the 4x100 team was just .45 seconds from an elite performance while the 4x400 teams ran solid, with Langdon earning the only PR in this relay and almost breaking 1:00 in the process (1:00.34).

 

Despite not having 11 of our 24 guys, this baker's dozen of 13 guys certainly represented the team well with another dominating performance.  We scored 167 to Collegiate's second place score of 103 and St. Bridget's 3rd place score of 84.  In fact, our total points from running events almost beat Collegiate (94).  We certainly showed the well-roundedness of our team, scoring 94 running event points and 73 field event points.  Long jump was our highest scoring event with 24 points.  We had a 1-2-3 finish in long jump, 1-3 in high jump, 2-3 in discus, 2 in shotput, 2-3 in the 100, 1-2 in the 1600, 1 in the 4x1, 3 in the 400, 1-3 in the 300 hurdles, 2 in the 800, 2 in the 200, and 2 in the 4x4.  Including both relays and individual events, Corbett had 3 victories and a runner-up finish, Langdon grabbed 3 runner-ups and a win, Emmanuel had a 1st and a 3rd with his 2 runner-ups, Alexander Koussoglou grabbed 3 runner-ups, Charlie had one of each medal (1st, 2nd, and 3rd) and Jayden had 2 wins, a 3rd, and a 5th and 7th, scoring in all 5 of his events.  Palmer had 2 bronze medals in high jump and hurdles.  Rounding out our scoring (top 8) was Jassen who had 2 fifths in his throwing events, Gabe who had a 6th in discus, and James Hyman who led off the runner-up 4x400 team, just missing scoring in the 400 with his 9th place finish.