Throughout the season, when not working on his jumping events, Ahmir Johnson has been running the sprint work-outs with Rahsheed Wright and usually keeping up. That had me thinking ahead to the Penn Relays 4×4 where we put our four best athletes in regardless of their specialty. (Sprinter, hurdler, jumper, distance guy….whom ever gives us the best chance to win.) Maybe he’d be a ‘secret weapon’ where we’d ‘shock the world’ with his debut at Penn and drop a sub-50. That was before he took me aside and asked me “coach, you think I could run in a relay this weekend?” Why not? We had yet to put together our best 4×4 due to ‘stuff’, ‘Sheed hadn’t run a 400 in awhile, and it was time to see who the other two guys would be. (AND that’s an event we ALWAYS take into the post-season.)
“The best laid plans…….” Don’t know who said it, can’t remember how it ends but we all know what it suggests. One of those ‘other guys’, Matt Flancer, came down with a bug so senior distance guy Ben Hoyer volunteered. Self-admitting to not be the speediest guy around, he’s a competitor and would do his best for the team. Brendan Cantos (55.0) led off and brought it in the mix with an indoor PR, ‘Sheed was next, his job was to either blow it open (he did, 52.7) or at least catch up and put Ahmir in position to race with people and Ben would finish the best he could. Johnson was given a big lead and those long legs just ate up the ground as he split 52.5 for his first time. Ben was all alone and raced against the clock posting 55.4 for an indoor PR. 3:36.82 makes MOC by 2 sec, but still well off the state standard of 3:33.23. Well within reach.
In other news (i love saying that), Liam Davies was just .01 off his PR in the hurdles, but a false start in the finals ended his day early. The lone other medallists on the day were (was?) the Distance Medley team placing 5th.
PR’s included frosh Brett Lehman’s 59.33 400, and Nathan Leung’s 9:44.99 3k.
60HH Davies 8.84, FS in finals
400M Lehman 59.33PR 12th place
800M Ruffner 2:23.23 20th place
Mile Hippensteal 5:16.07 12th place
3000 Leung 9:44.99 6th place
4×2 1:47.34 12th place (Wilson 25.0, Pieroni 27.2, T. Quinn 26.3, Reed 28.0)
4×4 3:36.82 1st place MOC (Cantos 55.0PR, Wright 52.7, Johnson 52.5PR, Hoyer 55.4PR)
4×8 10:06.32 13th place (Gaboury 2:24, Cimini 2:20, Le 2:36, Possoff 2:44PR)
DMR 11:58.97 5th place (Klugherz 3:42PR, Miles 57.8, J. Quinn 2:15.9, Chaiken 5:02.7)