What should have been a closely contested meet turned into a rout due to some serious ‘stepping-up’ by our guys along with some injuries and no-shows by their guys. The Cards lost two good 400/800 guys due to injury towards the end of indoors and are still out, a third is back but not 100%, their #1 sprinter is on bad ankles and their vaulters were on the FBLA trip. I knew they wouldn’t be at full strength but they have good coaches and one of the best jumpers in the state in Brian Kaufman (#1 PA indoors 23-3.5 long jump) and I NEVER underestimate our opponents.
The ebb and flow of an 18 event meet can have lots of momentum swings. The pendulum nudged in our direction with the first gun as Marlyn Johnson and Liam Davies went 1-2 for 300H. A sign of better things to come was Liam’s big 1 sec. drop in second place.
An ‘Uh-Oh’ moment for the visitors had to be event #2, the 4×8. Benefiting from some reconnaissance (Our spies went to the UD-Hatboro meet last Thursday to gather intel), we matched up our guys with what they showed vs. HH. Justin Ryan’s lead-off brought a decent lead but it was the second (Amed Shamsi 2:06.6, 3 sec PR) and third (Trey Hippensteal 2:14.9, 2 sec PR) legs that let Cam jog it in.
The sprinters then went to work. Rahsheed won the three sprints (10.7, 22.0, 50.8), we swept the hurdles (15.3, 15.4, 15.5, all PRs), and took the 4×1 and 4×4 convincingly. An exclamation point was added by Ahmir Johnson when he handed Kaufman losses in both horizontal jumps for two of his four wins.
Distance guys swept the long runs (Cam 800, Ben 1600, Matt 3200), and Justin Cooper tossed the shot over 48′ twice to add 2 feet to his previous best. After the dust settled, we won 17 out of the 18 events contested resulting in the very lopsided score of 126-24.
Largest margin of victory vs UD ever.