New Jersey Weekly Roundup
Thursday, May 4, 2006 By Ed Grant
As expected, it was the individual events that gave New Jersey a quite satisfactory weekend at the sun-drenched 112th annual Penn Relays with Danielle Tauro of Southern Regional and Ashley Higginson of Colts Neck providing an unprecedented sweep of the girls' distance events and Devon Bond of Trenton and Jeremy Pannino of Watchung Hills scoring in the boys; high jump and javelin throw, respectively.
For Tauro, it was the second leg on a hoped-for hat trick which will culminate at the outdoor Nationals. And, like her initial win at the Millrose Games in February, it came with plenty to spare as she finished 20 yards ahead of Bridget Franek of Crestwood, Ohio, in 4:48.51. It was, to put it mildly, a cakewalk for the talented junior who covered her final lap in 68 seconds.
Nor did this complete Danielle's weekend exploits. On Saturday, she won the 800M at the Lions Invitational in Middletown in 2:15.5 and also anchored a 4:07.0 victory for her school in the 1600R.
Higginson's win came just as easily. The two-time indoor all-group 3200-meter champion made her move with a couple of laps to go and just gradually moved away from the field for another 20-yard win over Franek's Crestwood teammate, Cassandra Schenck in 9:42.07, to give New Jersey its first win in the event since Monal Chokshi of Bridgewater scored in 1991.
But Colts Neck's hopes of sweeping the 3K races died the next day when Matt Centrowitz , Jr., of Broadneck, Md., kicked away from Craig Forys on the final lap to win by 10 yards in 8:20.09. Forys had to rally in the last few strides to save second from Jake Walker of Lincoln, Pa., his time of 8:21.82 being the third best outdoors in state history.
Krystal Cantey of Winslow Twp, favored to win the girls' 400-meter hurdles, showed the effects of her late winter leg injury as she tired in the stretch and wound up third in 1:00.05 with Shaquanda Meylor of Wilson fifth in 1:00.60. In Saturday's boys' race, Manny Mayers of Lakewood was a surprise second in 53.15.
Pennino's win at 194-2 in the javelin was the first time a New Jersey thrower had won the event in 16 years, an embarrassing experience for a state which has produced at least three world record-holders. And two more boys finished in the top six, Gary Johnson of Hamilton in fourth and Dominique Dixon of Morris Hills in sixth.
Bond took the high jump at 6-10 1/4, then passed the next listed height of 6-11 3/4 and was faced with the bar at 7-1. It was the second time this year that he has been denied a chance at the 7-0 mark itself; the first came at the Kearny Relays where the six-jump rule cut him short after an easy clearance at 6-10.
The Guyana-born junior has had quite an odyssey since being discovered last spring on an outdoor basketball court. Someone, seeing his amazing vertical jump, suggested he try out for the track team. It was already mid-season, but he cleared 6-8 to win the Central Jersey sectionals, then missed the rest of the state meet while he returned with his mother to Botswana to clear up a visa problem before returning to Trenton in August.
The state's top relay finish came, as expected, in the girls' distance medley which was simply a repeat of what happened indoors, the last time Roxbury met up with Suffern. This time, however, the Gaels stayed even for the opening 1200 leg as freshman Ariann Neutts ran 3:37.9. But Suffern opened a four-second gap on the two short legs and the 1600 anchor proved a standoff between Jenn Ennis of Roxbury and Kara McKenna of Suffern as both ran just under 4:59. The team times, however, were a bit slower with Suffern running 11:48.31 and Roxbury 11:52.07. The rest of the talented field was left far behind on the opening leg, Vere Tech dropping the stick to negate a 54.8 400 leg.
Three New Jersey teams did qualify for the girls' 3200R final, but none was a factor in the Friday race as they failed to even match their qualifying times. East Orange got to the 1600R final, beating out rival Camden Wilson by one-hundredth of a second, then ran seventh in a creditable 3:50.13. But, in the 400R trials, EO blew the second pass and failed to make even the consolation finals where Franklin posted the fastest NJ time of the weekend in the large school race, beating out Camden for fourth in 47.67. Wilson's team, composed entirely of hurdlers, was fourth in the small-school event in 48.39, while in Saturday's Tri-State race, won by West Catholic, the Tigers led a parade of NJ teams in second at 48.23
No New Jersey team placed in the top six in the four championship boys' races, but Winslow Twp scored a 3:22.01 victory in the Philadelphia Area final, anchored by soph Derek Rogers. (Camden beat out Wilson for second behind West Catholic in the girls' race in 3:51.45.)
The highlight of the Saturday morning set of boys' class races was a 46.6 second leg by Shaquan Brown of Paterson Kennedy. Brown almost didn't make the meet as most of the Kennedy runners had slight injuries and he himself had felt some twinges on Thursday. He started off rather slowly, which may have cost him a second or so, but raced past the field on the backstretch and brought the stick home on top, only to see his team slip to eighth in a race won by Old Bridge in 3:18.46. The Knights were anchored by Brown's long-distance rival Bryant McCombs (the two have met only once on the track with Shaquan ailing at the time), who ran 47.7.
Three other NJ boys ran around 48.0, two of them being twins Charles and Chris Cox, who attend separate schools. Charles brought Monmouth Regional home for one of NJ's 11 class victories, but Chris' Southern Regional team finished only seventh in its race. A third Jersey Shore runner, Paul Fay of Central Regional, also ran around 48.0.
Easily the best of the Jersey girls in Thursday's class races was Kristen Mahon of Notre Dame who ran a 54.3 anchor to bring her team from behind for a 4:02.89, one of six NJ victories. Franklin was the fastest of this group at 3:51.43, with Toneisha Friday and Symone O'Connor in the lineup together for the first time this year. East Orange ran third in 3:50.80 against eventual winner Holmwood Tech with Wilson taking the South Jersey race in a tantalizing 3:50.81 (the field clock first showed 3:50.79).
The featured boys' distance medley was quite a race, though the New Jersey teams were never relay part of it. Saratoga and Fayetteville-Manlius led home the first 1200, but the former simply collapsed on the next two legs and never finished, while the rest of the field vainly chased F-M which wound up a 25-yard winner in 10:06.71. Christian Brothers led the NJ finishers in eighth in 10:16.04.
Saturday action in the state was headed by the Lions Invitational where, in addition to Tauro's heroics, Shavon Greaves of Lakewood had a strong double at 12.1 and 24.2, and the Randolph Relays where the Roxbury girls had a meet record of 9:22.76 in the 3200R.
Conference and county action got underway on Tuesday with the Mountain Valley Conference and Middlesex County Relays. The former saw Rahway sweep both titles with the versatile Lashonda Carter leading the field to four victories, three of them in events she usually does no compete in: the long jump, triple jump and an 800-meter anchor in the sprint medley. With no available teammate, the indoor state high jump champion skipped that event.
The track feature were the boys' 1600-meter events. In the sprint medley on Tuesday, Ryan Malloy of Bound Brook and Watson Estelan of Rahway were both under 1:55 on their anchor 800-meter legs with the Brook winning in a record 3:33.6. In the 4x400 race on Wednesday, Eastelan broke things open with a sub-49 second leg as his team won in a record 3:22.7 while Malloy nailed second with a 48.0 anchor leg.
In the Middlesex meet, McCombs anchored Old Bridge to a 1:28.3 county record in the boys' 800-meter relay and brought the 400R and 1600R teams home in 43.5 and 3:23.6 as the Knights scored an easy team win. In the girls' meet, Old Bridge and South Brunswick tied at 98 points while Piscataway broke the county 800R mark at 1:41.4 and also took the 400R in 48.6, the 1600R in 3:55.2 and the 3200R in 9:53.5, Asia Washington anchoring all four with a 55.9 in the 1600 and a 2:14.2 in the 3200.