Group Championships Recap: Groups 2, 3, and 4

The winter track group championships make for one of the best weekends of the year: three straight days of spectacular performances by the best athletes across New Jersey — which includes plenty of runners, jumpers, and throwers from Mercer County!

Check out below some of the best performances by local athletes across the three public school divisions. The non-public schools had more of their athletes competing — they didn’t have to qualify through sectionals — so they got a separate recap here.

Stay tuned for an official list of who will be representing Mercer County at the Meet of Champions!

Group 2 Girls

Girls 1600m. Sydney Young (Hopewell Valley) qualified for the Meet of Champions with a third place finish in the Group 2 1600m! Young latched onto Ivy Slavinski (Pt. Pleasant Boro) and Cali Buxbaum (Wall) at the start and followed them through the 800m in a very quick 2:32. She fell off a little over the next laps, but by then she had left 4th place far behind and basically secured MoC qualification. Even still, she launched a huge kick on the bell lap, almost caught 2nd place, and came away with a new PR of 5:07.60. Young’s teammate Anna Wilson was 11th in 5:30.99, just a second off her own PR.

Girls 3200m. Hopewell Valley teammates Claire Dumont and Elsie Rey-de-Castro finished just outside the medals, with Dumont in 7th with a 11:32.61 and Rey-de-Castro in 8th with a 11:39.81. Not far behind, Maddie LaChance’s 11:51.63 gave Hopewell Valley three girls in the top 11.

Girls 4x400m. Hopewell Valley’s 4x400m team (Elle Krakovski, Elizabeth Eckel, Clara Mayer, Autumn Carter) ran a season’s best by 5 seconds to win their heat and take 7th overall. The first three girls did great to keep the Bulldogs in the top 2 the whole way, and then Carter’s 60-second anchor leg ultimately put a full straightaway between Hopewell Valley and the next team.

Girls Field Events. Uchenna Obidike (Hopewell Valley) had a great day and came home with two PRs and one medal! In the high jump, she cleared 5-2 for the first time ever, which got her 7th place. In the shot put, her 12-inch PR of 34-6 earned her a 6th place medal. Avery Rick (Hopewell Valley) cleared 8-6 in the pole vault to take 14th place.

Group 2 Boys 

Boys 400m. Gavin Alvarez (Allentown) is headed to the Meet of Champions after a hard-fought 2nd place finish in the Group 2 400m! Even though he couldn’t quite get around Demarest’s Adam Kaufman in the final 50m, he still hung on for a big PR of 50.83, his first time under 51 in the open 400m.

Boys 55m. Gavin Alvarez (Allentown) came back in the 55m prelims just a short while after his 400m silver medal, and his 6.70 snuck him into the final by just 0.01. He turned it on in the final, though, running a new PR of 6.62 for 4th place. He just missed auto-qualifying for the Meet of Champions, but he’s in position to earn a wild card entry. 

Boys 800m. Nish Seshadri (Robbinsville) ran within a second of his PR with a 2:06.17 for 18th place.

Boys 3200m. What a finish by Finnegan Curley (Hopewell Valley) in the lower-seeded heat of the 3200m! Five seconds back from the leader with 400m to go, Curley turned on the jets and closed in 65 seconds to win his heat and break the 10:00 barrier for the first time. His 9:58.32 was good for 8th overall in Group 2. It’s also #4 in Mercer County.

Boys 4x400m. The Robbinsville 4x400m team (Kenny Sikorski, Nathan Fleck, Tanay Patel, Will Strickland) ran 3:35.26 to finish 2nd in their heat and 4th overall in Group 2.

Boys Field Events. Dylan Voehl (Allentown) matched his season’s best of 5-8 to tie for 5th place in the Group 2 high jump. Samuel Rispoli (Robbinsville) similarly equalled his PR of 11-0 to finish 16th in the pole vault. 

Group 3 Girls

Girls Team Scores. Led by Allison Lee and Zui Chinchalkar, West Windsor-Plainsboro North tied for 4th place in Group 3 with 20 points.

Girls 1600m. Allison Lee (WW-P North) secured her spot in the Meet of Champions with a 2nd place finish in 5:02.47, just a second off her PR. She ran a very fast opening 400m of 71 seconds and led for the first 800m, until eventual winner Liliah Gordon (Northern Burlington) moved up and pulled away. Behind those top two, Zui Chinchalkar (WW-P North) and two other girls were battling for 3rd place the whole time. Chinchalkar was actually 1-2 seconds back with 400m to go, but a strong last lap saw her move up and finish in 4th place in 5:07, which should get her a MoC wild card. In the lower-seeded heat, Phoenix Roth (Princeton) ran with the chase pack for 800m before charging ahead alone to push after the leader. That strong move helped her to a two-second indoor PR of 5:15.33, good for 9th overall. Kajol Karra (Princeton) finished 14th in 5:18.07 for the first event of her doubleheader.

Girls 55mH. In the Group 3 hurdles, Alicia Riggins (Lawrence) took 16th in 9.06, just ahead of Brie Davis-Owens (WW-P North) in 9.09.

Girls 800m. Lena Murray (Princeton) ran 2:25.32 for 16th place, and her teammate Rachel Xin took 20th in 2:29.73.

Girls 55m. Aijah Somerselle (Hightstown) took 9th in the 55m in 7.41, just missing out on the finals by 0.02. Samya Jenkins (Lawrence) finished 12th in 7.46.

Girls 3200m. Mercer County will be sending lots of girls to the Meet of Champions in the 3200m! In a rematch from the 1600m, Allison Lee (WW-P North) again took 2nd place behind Liliah Gordon (Northern Burlington) in a very fast race, with Lee running 10:47.66. Kajol Karra (Princeton) ran aggressively with Lee and Gordon for most of the race and held on for 4th place in 11:06.07. Just a little further back, Izzy Meth (Lawrence) and Teagan Walker (Ewing) took advantage of being in the top-seeded heat and rode the pack to fast times: they both crushed their prior PRs – and school records! – by about 10 seconds. Meth finished 9th in 11:15.30, just ahead of Walker in 11:15.40 for 10th place. Grace Hegedus (Princeton) finished 3rd in the first heat with a time of 10:30.65, good for 13th overall.

Girls Field Events. In the pole vault, Sophie Trzaskus (Lawrence) matched her PR of 9-6 to earn a 6th place medal. In the shot put, Jaiden Bosley (Hightstown) threw a 5-inch PR of 32-1 to finish in 16th place.

Group 3 Boys

Boys 400m. Dasan Jones (Ewing) ran 52.86 for 15th place, a solid time despite getting tripped up and almost falling at the cut-in. 

Boys 55mH. Tristan Jusino Lansing (Lawrence) is headed to his third straight Meet of Champions in the hurdles after running a PR of 7.58 to take 2nd place in Group 3! He’s just the fifth Mercer County hurdler to go under 7.60 in the last 10 years. Alexander Nikolov (Lawrence) took 9th place with a time of 8.05, just missing out on the finals by 0.02 – but the fact that he was so close is amazing, given that his PR coming into this race was 8.23.

Boys 1600m. Burke Thompson (Hightstown) ran a terrific race in the lower-seeded heat of the 1600m. After running in last place for the first 400m, he used a strong second quarter to join a breakaway pack of four boys. With 200m to go, he was still 10m back in 4th, but he unleashed a monster kick, flew by everyone, and won the heat in 4:27.13, a nice indoor PR that was good for 7th overall. Behind the front four in Thompson’s heat, freshman Agrim Jha (WW-P North) won the battle against everyone else with a 4:33.24 to take 13th overall.

Boys 55m. Terrance Williams (Hightstown) advanced to the final with a 6.68, his third fastest time of the season. He ran a 6.71 there to take 7th place.

Boys 3200m. Burke Thompson doubled back from the 1600m to run 9:55.13 in the 3200m, using another big kick to get 2nd in his heat and 11th overall. That’s two indoor PRs in one day for Thompson. His teammate Mateo Abad-Delgado (HIghtstown) also ran well and inched closer to 10:00 with a PR of 10:04.98, which got him 16th overall.

Boys Shot Put. Sean Wilton (Princeton) scored a big upset to continue his spectacular unbeaten streak and win the Group 3 championship! Wilton, who’s ranked NJ #5 this season, threw 59-8.5 to beat NJ #1 Jonathan Harris (Delsea Regional) by 3 inches and NJ #4 Anthony Liakhnovich (Hammonton) by 11 inches. Wilton’s second-best throw of 59-6 would have won the competition, too.

Group 4 Girls

Girls 400m. Adama Turay (WW-P South) ran 1:01.02 – matching her time from sectionals exactly – to finish 3rd in her heat and 12th overall.

Girls Shot Put. Sonjay Baylor-Reeves (Trenton) advanced to the Meet of Champions after getting third in Group 4 with a throw of 41-10. This will be her first indoor MoCs, in addition to having qualified in the shot put outdoors twice.

Girls 4x400m. The WW-P South all-senior 4x400m team is heading to the Meet of Champions after their 3rd-place finish in the Group 4 4x400m! Their time of 4:05.24 cut two more seconds off their season best. Adama Turay, Saraiah Hoover, and Claire Dumortier all ran fast splits of roughly 61-high, which put Anastasia Kudin in a great position to lock up the auto-qualifying spot with her 59-second anchor leg.

Group 4 Boys

Boys 400m. Julius Kinsler (WW-P South) dug hard to move up on the homestretch and earn a 5th-place medal with a time of 50.72. That’s his 4th time going 50.x in the open 400m this season, and he should get at least one more chance at the Meet of Champions.

Boys 3200m. Shravan Pradeep (WW-P South) Pradeep stuck with the pack as it went through the 1600m in a somewhat conservative 4:51. He kept his eyes up as the pace quickened over the next few laps, covered moves, and kicked hard to sneak under 9:30 for the first time ever, indoors or out. He covered the last 1600m in 4:38 – just six seconds off his 1600m PR! That performance will get him an invite to the Meet of Champions.