Day 1 at the Illinois Class AA girls state track meet
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By Shannon Heaton | Saturday, May 17, 2008 |
CHARLESTON, Ill. — Here is a event-by-event look at how local Class AA participants fared in the first day of competition Friday at the Illinois girls state track and field meet at O’Brien Stadium on the Eastern Illinois University campus in Charleston.
Field events
A difficult day throughout for field-event competitors from the Times’ circulation area. In addition to all three local discus throwers failing to make finals (see related story), no other field-event competitor was able to reach Saturday’s round of competition.
In the long jump, Sterling’s Ceara Campos entered state with the shortest qualifying distance, and while she improved her position in the standings, her jump of 16 feet, 3 inches was not enough to move to finals. Campos tied for 28th place with that jump. Also, Galesburg’s Bailey Jackson finished last in the second of four heats, jumping 16-6 to finish 27th.
Moline pole vaulters Jessica Roche and Pressley Cullen both found tough sledding in an event that saw 12 vaulters make a finals-qualifying height of 10 feet, 9 inches. Roche did connect at 9-6 to tie for 22nd place overall, but Cullen did not make the opening height of 9 feet.
Likewise, Rock Island high jumper Michelle Strickland also no-heighted in her event. In an effort to conserve energy, Strickland passed on the opening height of 5-0, but missed all three attempts at 5-2 and was eliminated from further competition.
In the shot, Rock Island’s Alyssia Holliday’s best throw was 34-4, which put her ahead of four other shot-putters in her flight. However, she was competing in the shortest flight, and her throw wound up good for 40th place.
Triple jumper Halie Ecker of Moline was the area’s best in that event, but her jump of 35 feet, 2 3/4 inches did put her fifth in her heat. The jump was 29th best overall. Galesburg’s Jackson was 34th with a jump of 34-10 3/4.
Two throwers set state records Friday. Daniella Bunch of Mahomet-Seymour threw the shot 49-1 1/2 to take the first-day lead in that event, but leads Grant’s Bailey Ziegler by just two inches. Ziegler came back to set a state record in the discus, with a throw of 157-8.
3,200 relay
Moline ran nearly eight seconds under 10 minutes to qualify for this event last weekend in Ottawa, but not having senior Aisha Praught to anchor the relay was keenly felt by the Maroons. Moline was in the bottom half of its heat for almost all of the race, finishing 44th overall in 10:12.27.
400 relay
With six heats in this event, Rock Island’s best chance to make finals would mostly come via winning its heat, as only three teams would be chosen on the basis of time, given that all six heat winners would receive automatic berths. The Rocks had, mostly, good handoffs (though the one between third leg Ciara Turner and anchor Genesis Johnson had the two of them running nearly next to each other inside the lane), to finish with a time of 48.47 seconds, good for sixth overall.
“We’re hoping (Saturday) that it’ll be done,” Johnson said. “Top 3,” Turner interjected. “Top 3,” Johnson corrected herself.
100 hurdles
Sterling’s Kaitlyn Loos finished sixth in her heat, but that was good for 24th place overall, with a time of 16.03 seconds.
100
Johnson had a hard time getting untracked, starting nearly a full half-second behind the rest of the Heat 1 field here. Still, despite her fourth-place finish in the heat, she still nearly qualified for finals. She put together a solid time of 12.33 seconds, which put her in 11th place. Few runners might do so well with such a slow start.
“The 100 was kind of bad. I don’t really know what happened,” Johnson said of the start, which allowed Kaneland’s Lindsay Gierke — whom Johnson had beaten easily at sectionals last weekend in Ottawa.
800
No locals were qualified in this event.
800 relay
No locals were qualified in this event.
400
Johnson has said all season that this is her race, and proved it to some degree in the second of five heats in this event. She led wire-to-wire, putting the race away in the first 200 meters to finish in 56.17 seconds, .01 ahead of her fastest time this year (and a new school record to boot). Johnson enters Saturday’s final tied with the second-fastest time, .37 seconds behind Adrienne Slaughter of Evanston.
“I was kind of hurt (after the 100), but I had two more races to run,” Johnson said. “I had my best race in the 400, though, and that helped. Hopefully, tomorrow I’ll have a gold medal around my neck.“
300 hurdles
Like Johnson did in the 400, Turner led wire to wire in the first of five heats of this race. She did qualify with the slowest time among all the heat winners, but her win guaranteed that she would not be on an outside lane on Saturday.
“The first 150 (meters) felt really great,” Turner said, and her performance proved it. She had made up the stagger on the rest of the heat by the curve, a strong feat given the quality of competition.
“It gave me time to do what I needed to do.” That was to save some energy for a forthcoming 200, as well as two events on Saturday.
Rock Falls’ Miranda Brockman also competed in Turner’s heat, finishing fifth in the heat and 32nd overall, with a time of 48.46 seconds.
1,600
Moline’s Praught turned in the singular best performance of any Quad-Cities area Class AA runner. She stayed with the lead pack the entire race, briefly falling back to sixth on the third lap, but she put on a surge in the final 500 meters to take third in the heat. She briefly passed Limestone’s Nicole Benson for second down the homestretch, but Benson fought back for the spot. Still, Praught was one of six 1,600 runners to go under five minutes (4:59.70), which smashed the Maroon school record in the event.
“On the third lap, I realized that I could stay up there (with Benson and Bloomington’s Ashley Verplank, who won the heat and had the second-fastest time in 4:58.98),” Praught said. “This was huge for me. I never expected to do that at all.“
Praught wouldn’t say whether her performance Friday would mean that she would scratch out of Saturday’s 3,200 in order to concentrate on duplicating the performance. “I’ll talk to (Moline distance coach) Tony (Taylor), and see what I should do,” she said. “He knows what’s going on.“
200
In the second heat, Rock Island’s Turner couldn’t explode out of the blocks like she did in the 300 hurdles, quickly finding herself behind sprint powerhouses Slaughter and Toni Graham of Conant, both of whom went under 25 seconds. Still, she recovered down the homestretch to finish fourth in the heat — 19th overall — in 25.77 seconds.
In the third heat, Johnson got out slowly again, giving the initial advantage to East St. Louis’ Chelsey Robinson and Zion-Benton’s Aireonna Bailey. Johnson did surge past Bailey for second, and that proved to be huge, as Johnson nabbed the last finals spot with a time of 25.54 seconds — just .02 ahead of the 10th-place runner.
1,600 relay
In the first heat, Galesburg got as close as second place to initial heat leaders Bolingbrook, but the Silver Streaks couldn’t hold it on the third leg as Benet, Crystal Lake South and Thornton started making their moves. The Streaks improved on their sectional time by nearly five seconds, finishing in 4:01.81, but that was good for only fifth in the heat and 19th overall.
In the sixth and last heat, Rock Falls found itself in a murderous heat, with Batavia setting the pace in an eye-popping 3:51.50. The Rockets were eighth in the heat, finishing in 4:12.25.
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