This has always been a kind of warm-up for the varsity heading into post-season (yes, after Penn it’s ‘post-season’!), and a big opportunity for everyone else to get valuable experience. Upper Dublin seemed to dominate if you were watching track only, but the home team racked up 9 firsts over-all to their 5.
One of the ‘mirages’ appeared as the Cards came from behind to pull out the 4×4 win barely sneaking by our ‘Gold’ and ‘Blue’ varsity squads. We split the top guys into two teams to race each other up front and let our ‘alternates’ (Sam, Darnell and Andre) bring it home, hopefully forcing good splits. It payed off. After the second leg, both squads were up on UD and neither team would relinquish the lead until about 150 to go, as Kyle McMullen (their best), passed both. We now have 4 who have split sub-50 in their careers. A 3:18-3:19 at Penn is not an unreasonable prediction.
Gold – Darien Williams 49.9PR, Harman 51.4PR, Dol-Wes 51.2, Andre Jones 53.2 PR 3:26.64
Blue – Cam Christopher 50.9PR; Wright 49.8PR; Darnell Watson 52.6PR, Sam Kane 52.5PR 3:25.96
The 4×1 team which posted #2 PA 42.51 a few weeks ago got together again as a dry run for Penn. A ‘not-too-bad-but-enough-to-make-a-difference’ first exchange cost us time, but 42.60 was only .09 sec off. There’s more there! Sub-42.00 is possible.
The milers got into the PR action as the winning 4×1600 relay saw all four varsity guys beat their best. Cam (4:38.6), frosh Justin Ryan (4:54.4), Ben Hoyer (4:41.4) and Andy Harman (4:38.1) showed we should score points at conference in this event.
The jumping events have been a bug-a-boo lately, seemingly going backwards until Saturday. UD’s pesky Brian Kaufman has been sneaking past our guys regularly in the horizontals. We turned the tables as Darryl Baldwin nabbed the LJ (21-3.75 PR, District Qualifier, to BK’s 20-7.75), and Ahmir Johnson won the TJ (42-10.25 to BK’s 42-9.25).
The featured event was a 4×100 with guest appearances by Gabe ‘The People’s Champion’ Colman and Jared ‘The Jaguar’ Glass, running the second and fourth legs with Darien and Ethan. Gabe and Jared donated their appearance fees to charity but said in a post-race interview, “if we do this again, we want the top guys with us, not these two scrubs!” 🙂