League champion Ventura dominated many of the events at Friday’s Channel League Track & Field Championships, yet San Marcos and Dos Pueblos still had many CIF individual qualifiers who placed top three throughout the meet at Buena High School.
Dos Pueblos’ girls 4×100 relay took first place over San Marcos, as one of the first events on the track. The young competitors that made up this winning team Sydney Eilbacher, Niema Poindexter, Stamatia Scarvelis and Natalie Klapp gave strong performances throughout the day.
Scarvelis, who also won shot put (43?-11? ) and discus (126?-06?), spoke for the relay team.
Dos Pueblos sophomore Stamatia Scarvelis, pictured on the right in a previous meet, won two individual events and was a member of the winning 4x100 relay team.
?For our 4×1, three of us are sophomores and one?s still a freshman so we just want to go as far as we can and keep improving our times.?
Freshman Natalie Klapp also had two wins after the 4×1 relay. She dominated the short sprints with a first place 100 time of 12.73 and a first place 200 time of 26.62.
Another relay runner, Niema Poindexter earned a league title in the triple jump with a mark of 34?-10?.
Addi Zerrenner took first place in the 3200 after having a close second place finish in the 800 earlier in the meet. She held times of 11:17 and 2:16 respectively.
On the boys side of things, San Marcos’ Davey McBride qualified himself in four events for CIF prelims. He qualified in both relay events, and both hurdle events with a personal record 15.65 in the 110-meter hurdles and a personal record 39.85 in the 300-meter hurdles.
?I was very happy about my PR, I think it was a long time in coming,? McBride said.
McBride pointed out that he has hit several 41?s recently.
?I knew that I really had to work on my hurdle form to get it below that and I think that today, practice combined with the competition, really helped me do that. It put me in the right mental state.?
Andrew Thayer also held onto a first place finish for the Royals in the 100.
Another solid performance on the boys side came from Dos Pueblos’ Waiman Meinhold who took first in long jump with a personal record 20?-11? and first in the triple jump with a mark of 44?-02?.
First and second place in the boys 3200 went to Chargers Bryan Fernandez and Maxwell Davis.
The rest of the first place finishes for boys events were dominated by the Cougars.
Ventura coach Corey Anderson recognized the other teams’ strength in the boys sprints.
?As a team we were pretty concerned about all the Santa Barbara sprints. Even Santa Barbara has improved a lot on the boys side,? he said. ?We kind of had a decent year, until tonight, we really popped.?
For Santa Barbara sprints there was a bit of an upset in the 200. Collin Fasth was expected to do well with a second place seed in the race, but pulled up half way through with an injured hamstring.
Coach Olivia Perdices spoke with Fasth soon after.
?He stopped before it pulled he thinks,” Perdices said. “He went in knowing that if it tightened up he would pull up because he wants to run the relay next week.?
The Dons had a strong second place finish which qualified the boys 4×100 relay for CIF Prelims. Fasth is on this relay with Bradford Jellison, Gavin Koehn and James Stevens.
