Boys Meet Summary
The Southern Track Classic celebrated its 10th year of existence on Friday evening at Sports Backers Stadium with another year of ideal weather and great competition. Often the girls have taken much of the attention and focus away from the boys with the performances, but the boys ruled at the 2009 Classic.
Justin Hunter and James Taylor claimed two victories as the only double winners of the meet. Ocean Lakes junior Justin Hunter did not match his season best performances of 7'2" in the high jump or 25 feet in the long jump, but still impressed nonetheless with a 6'10" clearance in the long jump and 24'3.50" in the long jump. Hunter seriously threatened the meet records in both events as only a couple inches total separated him from two meet records with the existing meet record marks at 7'0" in the high jump and 24'5.50" in the long jump.
James Taylor, a state champion in the long jump, bypassed the event to focus on the sprint races as dominated strong fields in the 100 and 200 meter dash with runaway wins of 10.84 in the 100 and a state best clocking of 21.45 in the 200 meter dash. The Nansemond River senior was clearly the class of the field in the sprints and ended up being selected as the athlete of the meet for the running events.
Isaiah Simmons of Woodbridge set a sophomore state record in the shot put in an outstanding competition with five boys over 54 feet in the event. Simmons, the AAA state indoor champion in the shot, threw for a personal best of 2 1/2 feet with his winning toss of 59'5.50" to shatter the meet record of 57'1.75" previously held by both Steve Huntzinger (James Robinson) and Mike Zajac (E.C. Glass).
Bobby Peavey of Kellam just missed breaking 9 minutes for 3200 meters converted with his stellar 9:04.23 victory in the two mile run. The Group AAA state meet indoor record holder at 1600 meters, helped insure a hot pace early on, but broke away from the field in the final half mile to roll to a nine second victory ahead of Group A state cross country champion Ben Veilleux of Clarke County (9:13.26). Veilleux and NXN individual qualifier teammate Josh Hardin of Potomac Falls (9:15.81) ran huge lifetime bests in their top 3 finishes in the two mile.
The state champion in the 400 meter dash might not be coming out of the Eastern Region this spring as E.C. Glass senior David Verburg has been on a tear as of late as shown with his impressive triple last weekend at the Joe Curcio Invite including a state leading 47.15 performance in the 400 meter dash. Matching up against two top contenders in the 400 meter dash in Great Bridge's Taylor Sykes and West Potomac's Jon McCants, Verburg proved to be the superior quarter miler on Friday night with a 47.68 win. Verburg recently committed to George Mason University.
Stonewall Jackson's Damien Thigpen outdid himself from his 2008 performance in which he set a new meet record at the Southern Track Classic in a 37.78 victory. Northwest Region rival and 110 meter hurdles winner Reynaldo Radlin of North Stafford ran under Thigpen's meet record time at 37.76, but had to settle for second as Thigpen almost lowered his time by a full second in a time of 36.98 win and just off his 36.75 state leading performance from early April. Thigpen will be shooting for an historic third straight Group AAA state title in the 300 meter hurdles.
The boys' mile field should have known better to go out conservative in the first half of the race as it played right into the hands of Albemarle's Zachary Vrhovac. Vrhovac, who split 1:50 on Albemarle's 7:30 national record 4x800 meter relay at Penn Relays, kicked pass Nike Indoor Nationals 800 meter champion Billy Ledder of Gonzaga (DC) on the final stretch to a 4:14.53 victory.
Tihut Degfae of Thomas Edison did not sit back and wait for the race to come to him in the boys 800 meter run as he took charge in the first 400 meters and held on at the end to pull through with a 1:54.62 for the current state leader in the event. Degfae may have not improved his season best time, but he helped pull along virtually the entire field to personal best runs including an unexpected runner-up 1:55.43 performance from Stafford's Jacob Lysher.
It was an off day for Nike Indoor Nationals champion David Wilson of George Washington in the triple jump as he topped out five feet under his personal best in the event at 46'5.50", so Princess Anne's Ryan Beaver took advantage to capture the triple jump title and rare victory over one of Virginia's best triple jumpers of all-time in a personal best and wind legal mark of 47'2".
The pole vault competition between Allen Kelly of King's Fork and Matthew Armentrout of Deep Run was not as dramatic as anticipated with Armentrout bowing out after clearing 14'6", but Kelly continued on to clear a state best height of 15'6". Kelly enjoys a win over the National Scholastic Indoor Championships pole vault winner Armentrout now, but the state title will likely not be a sure thing for either until one of them starts taking their height to 16 feet and higher.
Austin Hersh of James River was the only Richmond area athlete to win an individual event for the boys. None of the competitors in the field seemed to throw well or above their seed marks, but the consistent Hersh maintained his steady level of strong performances this season with a 158'5" win as it is one of the few times that the James River senior has been under 160 feet this season.
Varina also brought home a win for the home crowd in the 4x800 meter relay with their second sub 8 minute performance of the season at 7:59.62. After strong legs from their first two in Kristopher Johnson and Nyler Gaskins to put them in the lead, anchor leg Devin Lacks had to bring them back up into the lead as he battled with AAA state 1000 meter runner-up Alec Ward of Douglas Freeman. Lacks, a third place finisher in the state 1000 this past March, was able to take his team from fourth to first while Ward and Freeman placed second at 8:01.78 to make for a Central Region top 2 showing.
The Grassfield boys continued to be overlooked and maybe overshadowed by their female counterparts, but that is soon to change if they continue to post the 4x100 meter relay times as they did on Friday at Sports Backers Stadium in winning the race in a state best time of 41.87 to better the time ppsted by Western Branch at Penn Relays of 41.99.
Western Branch may have more competition in the 4x100 from their district rival Grassfield, but certainly have an edge now over the competition in the 4x400 meter relay as they defeated 4x400 state leaders West Potomac at Southern Track Classic in a season best time of 3:18.35 to rank them second fastest in the state behind West Potomac's 3:15.27 from the Penn Relays. Western Branch opted to focus only on the relay instead of individual events with their relay legs, while three of West Potomac's legs competed in earlier events and finished five seconds off their Penn Relays time at 3:20.25 for runner-up honors.