Photo by John Roemer
Saturday's Howard County Winterfest completely rearranged the 2016-17 Maryland indoor rankings with great performances all around! Here were some of the best performances of the day.
Meet records: There were four new meet records set on Saturday at the Sportsplex, three on the girls side and one on the boys. The first one fell in the boys 4x800 where the Oxon Hill boys clocked a MD #2 time of 8:16.27 in a blowout win. The Clippers bring back three quarters of the relay that won both the indoor and outdoor 3A 4x800 last season and will be tough to beat this year as well.
Cameron Hinton established herself as one of the best mid-distance runners in her class over the past two years at Maryvale Prep, so when she transferred to Franklin to join her summer training partner Nyjari McNeil the state certainly took notice. Hinton broke the 300 meter meet record at the Winterfest on Saturday in 40.29, marking the second straight year the event record was broken.
The girls DMR featured a showdown between Damascus and George C. Marshall (VA). The Kameka sisters helped create a gap for Damascus through three legs but Marshall anchor Jenna Robbins closed the gap and eventually pulled away on the final lap. The Statesmen broke McDonogh's meet record by six seconds while Damascus also came within a second of the old mark.
The only field event record that fell on Saturday came courtesy of South River's Gwen Zeckowski and Hereford's Alexandra Butz in the pole vault. Butz won the 2A championship last spring while Zeckowski was the 4A runner-up. Both girls cleared 10'6 for the first time in the meet's history with Zeckowski winning on the tiebreaker.
Close races: There were many races that went right down to the wire on Saturday. Oxon Hill's Daniel George won the final heat of the 300, but when the dust settled it was Kennedy's Raynard Bell - who had won the previous heat - who emerged victorious with a time of 36.82. In fact, George placed third, behind Bell and Western Tech's Nicholas Richardson, who finished second in heat 5 out of 16.
The boys 4x200 race was a thriller, with the teams in the final section going back-and-forth until Atholton pulled it out in 1:34. However they were unfortunately DQ'd, meaning that Reservoir - who might have won anyway - took the win from the prior heat. One of the Gators' legs, Jesse Parson, won another close race in the 55 hurdles, where the top three boys were separated by .04 seconds.
Both of the girls' distance races went down to the wire. In the 3200 Hereford's Kelly Wesolowski led for most of the race before Northern's Molly Barrick took the lead with about four laps to go. Wesolowski, however, would not be defeated, surging back ahead in the final lap and edging Barrick by a second. Barrick's teammate, Sarah Deresky, went back-and-forth with Churchill's Julia Reicin in the 1600 before pulling ahead off the final turn to conclude a blazing last lap.
Franklin's Nyjari McNeil won the 500 comfortably and was aiming for another in the 800, but Friendly's Antoinette Bradley had other plans. After McNeil led for the first three laps, Bradley pulled ahead down the back stretch and held off McNeil's final charge by one hundredth of a second.
