Adidas Track Nationals Recap
The third and final national meet wrapped up this weekend with the Adidas Indoor Track Nationals. WW-P South, Ewing, and Notre Dame brought some of their best runners down to Virginia Beach for this championship meet. See full results for Adidas nationals here, and check out last week’s recap from New Balance nationals and Nike nationals here.
Julius Kinsler (WW-P South) capped an incredible season by blasting a 49.42 to take 3rd place at Adidas Nationals! That’s a huge PR and lifts him to NJ #11. His heat was unexpectedly the most competitive of the 10 heats, which was a blessing and a curse. For instance, he didn’t win the pole position at the break despite going out in a blazing 22.93 — that’s faster than his 200m PR and would put him at #4 in Mercer County this season! But on the plus side, running against that level of competition is why he went to nationals, and it likely carried him to his huge race. Don’t forget that he’s just a junior! He’ll be the #3 returner next winter.
The Notre Dame boys hurdlers keep piling on their successful season. After taking 3rd at the very competitive New Balance Nationals in Boston last week, they went down to Virginia Beach this week and ran another nice race at Adidas Nationals, this time taking 2nd place in 30.66. This week’s All-American team was AJ Crawford, Nolan Schmitz, Bryce Marsh, and Christopher Young, with Schmitz subbing in for Zamir Jones from last week.
Teagan Walker took 4th place in the National Elite division of the 2 Mile with a time of 11:24.78, which is a new Ewing school record. She also anchored Ewing’s SMR team to a school record of 4:25.79, which got them 1st in their heat and 5th in the National Elite division! Along with Walker, Ewing’s school-record team included Leah Daniels, Karis Crossland, and Angel Johnson.
Angel Johnson (Ewing) had a very productive meet! On Friday, she ran the 60mH in a PR of 9.60 to place 10th in the freshman division. Her 55mH split en route was 8.92, making her just the 5th Mercer County girl under 9.0 this season. She also PR’d in the 60m, where she ran 8.14 (including a 7.54 55m en route) for 18th place among freshmen. The next day, she joined Karis Crossland, Lynsah Rejouis, and Victoria Seaton on Ewing’s shuttle hurdles team, which took 8th place in 37.74 for the 4x55m relay. Then on Sunday, Johnson ran a leg on the school-record SMR. What a weekend!
Dasan Jones (Ewing) popped a fantastic 200m on Sunday, running a 22.73 to cut almost 0.4 off his PR. That’s #2 in Mercer County this winter. Jones also ran the 60m in 7.32 earlier in the weekend.
Other Ewing qualifiers who got great nationals experience were Leah Daniels (60m in 8.35), Zoey DeSouza (shot put in 26-1.75), and Calvin Kallie (60mH in 8.86).
WW-P South had a few other qualifiers, too. Their boys SMR team (Julius Kinsler, Aydun Hines, Travis Holko, and Sean Maina) ran 3:44.99, which is a season’s best and moves them up to #2 in Mercer County this year. They won their heat and took 7th in the National Elite division. In individual events, Arjun Suresh ran a 2:05.93 800m and Logan Mills ran 8.36 in the 60m.