Who won finals on the track?
When a meet features 47 teams, there are certain to be some fireworks going off. At Pomona on Friday this was early and often. It did not take long on the track for things to get heated up in the 4x800s. It can be difficult at times to coax other coaches in to loading up their 4x800s so that elite level teams have competition. The heat sheets were a delicious perfect storm for the girls as they featured multiple teams under ten minutes.
The 4x800 exchange zones at state can look at times a little bit like a demolition derby. Enterprising coaches will seek out the opportunity to run under these conditions when given the opportunity.
Despite an epic last lap effort by Grandview's Brie Oakley, it was the Mountain Vista team of Jessica Barich, Maureen Fitzsimmons, Lauren Soares and Rebecca Walton who won with a new season best 9:42.07, an eight second improvement off of their seed time. Grandview ran 9:42.74. Cherry Creek, ever the hard out ran a gallant 9:54.
Legend High School did everything it could to live up to its name in the boys 4x800. They certainly did not come in as the number one seed, but they did leave with an 8:02.08. Only Monarch has run faster this year.
The only other finals run on the track were the elite heats of the 3200. Both were won in somewhat epic come-from-behind fashion. Shae Henley from ThunderRidge out kicked Maureen Fitzsimmons and Caroline Eck from Mountain Vista for the win. In the boys race, first through third was split by less than a second. The Rock Canyon duo of Bailey Timmons and Chris Theodore went 1-2 and Awek Beraki from Palmer High took third. Not often that there are three boys at 9:35 in the same race.