Central Group 4 Sectionals Recap
Closing out winter track sectionals on Thursday night – as far as Mercer County is concerned – was Central Group 4. This large-school section contains only two local schools: West Windsor-Plainsboro South and Trenton. Even with this section having some of the toughest qualification standards in the state, Mercer County will be sending a solid squad to the Group 4 Championships on February 23rd!
Check out highlights from all the qualifiers below, along with some other noteworthy performances.
Girls Results
Girls 400m. The fast heat of the girls 400m featured a chaotic last 50m with multiple passes on the inside and outside. Anastasia Kudin (WW-P South) and Adama Turay (WW-P South) survived that chaos and secured qualification to groups by finishing in 4th and 5th. Their times were almost identical times, with Kudin in 1:01.01 and Turay in 1:01.02. Claire Dumortier (WW-P South) was just a few steps behind them in 1:01.93, but she was an agonizing 0.07 seconds slower than the top girl in the prior heat, who bumped Dumortier out of the final qualification spot. Despite the tough race, these girls all bounced back to run great in the 4x400m!
Girls 1600m. Kate Grecsek (WW-P South), a freshman in her first season of running, has already shown big potential this year by breaking 5:30 twice. But she reached another level on Thursday when she PR’d by 5 seconds at a high-stakes race to qualify for groups! With 100m to go, Grecsek was locked in a three-way battle for the last two qualifying spots, but she held strong and used a great kick to finish 6th place in 5:21.04.
Girls 55mH. Saraiah Hoover (WW-P South) ran a season’s best of 9.14 to grab a top-10 finish. She’d later join her 400m teammates on the 4x400m relay. Zunica Zubah (Trenton) was just three spots behind Hoover with a 9.34 for 13th.
Girls 800m. Ani Charles (WW-P South) ran a 4-second PR of 2:37.47 for 21st place in the 800m.
Girls 3200m. Yana Chheda (WW-P South) ran 12:06.66 to finish just two spots out of qualifying for groups. Her teammate, Risha Rao (WW-P South), doubled back after a 5:43 1600m to run a PR of 12:20.32 in the 3200m.
Girls 4x400m. The WW-P South girls (Adama Turay, Saraiah Hoover, Claire Dumortier, and Anastasia Kudin) capped the evening with a dramatic win in the 4x400m! Through the first three legs, Turay, Hoover, and Dumortier did a great job in dropping the whole field except for North Brunswick, who had a 1.5-second lead at the final exchange – which wasn’t enough cushion against Kudin’s 59-second anchor leg! Kudin made up a ton of ground on her first lap, pulled onto North Brunswick’s shoulder with 100m to go, and then made the decisive pass with just 30m left to steal the win for the Pirates.
Girls Shot Put. In a battle between two 40-foot throwers, Sonjay Baylor-Reeves (Trenton) prevailed to take home her first sectional title! Her third throw of 39-10 was enough to top Angela Volkova (Hillsborough), whose farthest on the day was 39-0.5.
Boys Results
Boys 400m. Julius Kinsler (WW-P South) is a sectionals champion after an incredibly exciting 400m! With just 20 meters to go, Kinsler – who had been running in 2nd place all race – was still a meter or two behind Crue Brown (Manalapan) and seemed to have run out of track. But with a huge effort in just the last four strides, Kinsler somehow managed to close the gap and outlean Brown for the win, 50.69 to 50.72! He earned his first trip to a group meet.
Boys 1600m. Aditya Deshpande (WW-P South) finished strong in the 1600m, passing a couple other boys over the last 400m to finish 8th in 4:40.35. He opened his season only two weeks ago and is already just two seconds off his outdoor PR. His freshman teammate Aron Zola (WW-P South) ran a 7-second PR of 4:50.00 in the second heat to get 19th overall.
Boys 800m. Sean Maina (WW-P South) ran a great race to take 2nd in his heat and 10th overall in 2:06.81. That was a 3-second PR for the freshman. His senior teammate Arjun Suresh (WW-P South) ran an indoor PR of 2:08.15 in just his second meet of the year.
Boys 3200m. It didn’t take long for Shravan Pradeep (WW-P South) to get back into track shape! The CVC cross country MVP, who took an extended break after a long fall season, crushed his first 3200m of the year by finishing 3rd overall with a 9:35.33! That’s #21 in New Jersey, #1 in Mercer County, and it’s already within four seconds of his outdoor PR. Perhaps even more impressive is the way he ran it: he had no seed time, so he had to solo the entire race while lapping tons of runners in the slower heat. With him having two more weeks of training and a chance to race with the best at groups, get excited for what he can do on February 23rd! Also runner who had a nice 3200m on Thursday was Kevin Lang (WW-P South), who took 13th with a big indoor PR of 10:09.31, which is #8 in Mercer County this season.
Boys Shot Put. Shine Williams (Trenton) has been on a roll this season, and he isn’t stopping now! The senior PR’d in his fifth straight meet to take 3rd place in 47-5. That moves him up to #4 in Mercer County this season and sends him to groups for the first time.