The sprint quartet from Freedom (Woodbridge) made their trip up to New York a successful one and came back with the victory and a new US #1 time of 1:29.13. That time jumps quite a few teams and lands them at VA #16 all-time in this event.
According to our records that is also a school record and the fourth fastest time ever from a Northern Virginia school.
Freedom did not have their relay order listed online but it looks like the team was made up of Jaylen Barringer, Trei Thorogood, Nick Newman, and James Ansah. Their 5th man, based on 300m rankings is Devin Noble.
Their time is impressive but what is eye-opening is that their top five 300m runners are all juniors this year. That means this is not by any measure their ceiling and just the beginning.
When you do the math, and try to do it realistically and conservatively, you can predict a team can 2.5 seconds faster over the course of a year. That just equates in improvements from each leg but leaves out the obvious thing in these elite 4x2's and that is handoffs.
Saturday their handoffs weren't horrible but also were not perfect. They had lane six to start which is good but also dangerous at that first exchange. They rightfully were cautious there but could have squeezed out another fraction of a second. The second exchange was very good and final exchange could definitely use some work. If they had perfect blind handoffs on Saturday they would have run 1:28.5.
Unless there are a crazy amount of fast times this weekend, Freedom should enter the VA Showcase as the US #1 team. This means they will get a chance, on home soil this time, to improve on that time. Do not be surprised if they do break 1:29 on the 18th because this team is just getting going.