"Canaday and Chan hardly ever run the 400-meter hurdles, even in practice," said Jamestown head coach Ed Boyd. But because the Conn-Madden Relays are a warmup meet, a chance to experiment with new combinations, Boyd said he decided Saturday to see how the duo would perform in the event.
"At such an early time in the season, we're just trying to find out whatever works," Boyd said. "We actually put Canaday and Chan in to train for the 300-meter hurdles."
With a time of 59.7 seconds, Canaday broke a 15-year-old meet record of 1:02.2. With a second-place finish of 1:01.6, so did Chan.
"They just took off," Boyd said. "They surprised us, and we were very happy with the results."
"You don't expect to record times like that so early in the season, which is why we just came into this event as a tune-up," said Boyd, whose Eagles also set a new mark for the 6,400-meter relay at the two-day meet Friday and Saturday.
"I don't think we expected it, and I know no one in the stands thought we would do so well. But our squad really looked tough out there, so there were a lot of great surprises. This event was a good, good testing ground for us."
The 6,400-meter team, consisting of Bryce Ruiz, Tony Davila, Brandon Miles, and Jeff Magner, clocked in at 18:31.0, which easily broke the 18:50 record set by York High in 1986.
"Usually, we use meets like this as a stepping stone, a warmup for the state competition in June," Miles said after the meet.
"We had worked out hard this morning and yesterday, so we didn't think we could run that fast. We started off with the faster runner and went to the slowest, which is the opposite of what we usually do. I just hope we can do that well at state."
But the Jamestown team wasn't the only group to help rewrite the Conn-Madden record book. Over the two-day event, five records were set. Deep Creek students Quentin Matthews and James Anderson from Chesapeake combined to set a new mark in the high jump. With a combined total of 13 feet, the duo broke the previous meet record of 12 feet, 10 inches.
"It's cold out here, so all we could was come out here and try to win," Anderson said. "But we knew that breaking the record was possible if we did our best."
"We just finished up with the indoor track season, so we didn't get much practice in for this event," said Matthews, whose top individual jump for the day was 6-8. "I know I can do better than I did. I just have to prepare more."
In other high jump action, Menchville's Keith Moffat, a junior, showed the form that won him the event at the Nike national championship meet in Maryland in early March. He recorded the top individual jump of the meet, 6-10.
"I'd like to win the region and state this season, because I came in second place in both last season," said Moffatt, who started jumping in the ninth grade.
At nationals, Moffat won with a jump of 7 feet 1/4 inch, his highest ever.
"I couldn't believe that I jumped that high," he said. "I was pretending that it was at 6-8, and it actually seemed easy. I think I can go higher than I have."