Week 6: NJSIAA State Relays
It’s state relays week, which means five straight days of high energy meets at the Bubble in Toms River! Mercer County schools held up well against the rest of the state, including two relays teams that came away victorious: Notre Dame in the Non-Public A boys shuttle hurdles relay, and WW-P North in the Group 3 girls distance medley relay. Here are some other highlights from an exciting week of relays.
Non-Public A & B Relays
The non-public schools kicked off the relays on Wednesday. Notre Dame competed in Non-Public A, and Princeton Day and Stuart Country Day competed in Non-Public B. Full results here.
The biggest race at the Non-Public A relay championship was the shuttle hurdle showdown between two of the fastest teams in the state: NJ #2 Paramus Catholic and NJ #3 Notre Dame. In the end, Notre Dame (Aldric Crawford, Nolan Schmitz, Christopher Young, Zamir Jones) avenged its loss to Paramus at the NJCTC relays by dominating here. They ran the cleanest race and won by over a second with a time of 30.79.
The Notre Dame runners also took 4th place in both the SMR (3:50.41) and the 4x800 (8:56.45), and their throwers Jeylon Billups (5th in 42-8) and Cameron Bailey (6th in 42-3) took 2nd as a team in the shot put relay. Their jumpers also had a great day, getting 2nd place after Zamir Jones and Nolan Schmitz both cleared 5-10, which matched Jones’s PR and was a new PR for Schmitz. The Notre Dame boys finished 4th overall in the team standings.
The Notre Dame girl hurdlers took 3rd place in the shuttle hurdles relay with a season’s best of 36.03, which is #2 in Mercer County this season. Their girls SMR team also had a nice race, placing 4th in 4:27.33, which is #3 in Mercer County. High jumper Sophia Cramer cleared a new PR of 4-10 to get 4th place individually.
The Princeton Day girls DMR got 3rd place in the Non-Public B competition with a time of 14:50. The boys DMR team also scored points by running 12:54.41 for 6th place.
Stuart Country Day scored points with 6th place finishes in both the girls 4x400m (4:43.21) and the girls SMR (4:50.38).
Group 2 Relays
Next at the Bubble was the relay championship for Group 2, which included Robbinsville and Allentown. Full results here.
Robbinsville hands off going into into the final leg of the 4×400m. | Tom Smith for MileSplit
The Robbinsville boys 4x400m team had one of the best races of the day, getting 2nd place in a season’s best of 3:34.58. The team of Kenny Sikorski, Tanay Patel, Nathan Fleck, and Will Strickland kept themselves in the top three for the entire race and then held off Bernards in an exciting finish to capture 2nd place. Those eight points carried Robbinsville to a 12th place finish in the boys team standings.
The Allentown girls showed that they have a well-rounded team of solid sprinters and distance runners. Their 4x200m team was 10th place in 1:53.88, and their 4x800m team also got 10th place in 10:56.19. They were one of just four Group 2 teams to place top 10 in both events.
In other distance relays, the Robbinsville girls got 9th place in the DMR with a time of 13:53, and the Allentown boys finished 11th in the 4x800m in 9:01.
Group 3 Relays
Group 3 ran on Saturday morning and included the largest group of Mercer County schools: Ewing, Lawrence, Hightstown, Nottingham, Steinert, and West Windsor-Plainsboro North. Full results here.
Girls Highlights
The girls DMR featured an exciting duel between WW-P North and Ocean City. Allison Lee gave the Knights a solid lead after the 1200m leg, but Ocean City – who had three all-state girls during this past XC season – slowly chipped away until Ocean City’s anchor and WWP North’s Zui Chinchalkar were neck-and-neck going into the bell lap. The last 225m were electric and included four lead changes, the last of which was when Chinchalkar dug deep and barely edged ahead of Ocean City in the final strides. The margin of victory was a mere 0.03, making it the closest race of the day! The relay runners (and their approximate splits) were Lee in 3:44, Brie Davis-Owens in 61, Sara Secora in 2:25, and Chinchalkar in 5:15.
In addition to winning the DMR, WW-P North got top 10 finishes in three other events. Their SMR team scored points with a 5th place finish in 4:23.34. Their 4x800m team was 7th place with a time of 10:24, and their 4x400m team was 9th place in 4:26.91.
The Lawrence sprinter and vaulters had a good day. Their sprinters secured top 10 finishes in both the shuttle hurdles relay (8th in 36.63) and the 4x200m (9th in 1:52.16). Lawrence’s pole vaulters Sophie Trzaskus and Zuzanna Trzasko scored points for the Cardinals by tying for 5th place with a school record in the pole vault relay! Sophie Trzaskus was 7th place overall, clearing 9-6 for a PR and new individual school record!
Another girls team to snag a top 10 finish was the Ewing shuttle hurdle squad, which got 10th place with a time of 36.79.
Boys Highlights
In the boys DMR, Hightstown just held off Steinert, 11:07.01 to 11:10.31, to get 11th place overall and to claim the top spot on the Mercer County leaderboard. The two teams’ anchors, Burke Thompson and Tyler Hurst, got the sticks side-by-side and pushed each other to great splits of roughly 4:31 and 4:33.
The Hightstown boys 4x200m team was seeded just 23rd coming into the meet, but they greatly exceeded those expectations and got 8th place in 1:37.08.
WW-P North’s boys 4x800m team got 4th place, which was the best finish by a Mercer County boys team in any running event in Group 3. Their time of 8:21.92 is #2 in Mercer County and #15 in New Jersey this year.
Hightstown didn’t have a seed time for the boys 4x800m, so they ended up in the “slow” heat, but that led to a great battle for 1st place in their heat. Although they were narrowly edged out in that regard, they were pushed to a nice time of 8:41 and ended up getting 8th place overall.
The Nottingham and Ewing boys both came away with one top 10 finish each. Nottingham got 9th in the SMR with a time of 3:48.12, while Ewing’s 4x400m team finished 9th in 3:41.61. WW-P North finished just behind Ewing in the 4x400m, getting 10th in 3:43.02.
The Lawrence shot putters did really well, with Isaiah Spencer (15th in 44-5) and Ryan Rodriguez (19th in 43-4.25) combining to get 3rd place overall in the shot put relay. That scored 6 points for Lawrence, which was good for 14th in the team standings and made them the top Mercer County team! In the individual shot put results, Nottingham’s Ernest Gaykai got 6th place with a huge throw of 49-0.25 – that’s a three-foot PR and a new indoor school record!
Group 4 Relays
The state relays wrapped up with Group 4 on Monday, after a one-day snow delay. West Windsor-Plainsboro South was the only Mercer County school to run in this group.
WW-P South’s girls 4x200m ran a great race to win the second-fastest heat in 1:48.72. That time held up as 6th overall, earning them a point in the team standings. It’s also the #2 time in Mercer County this season.
A short while later, those same four WW-P South girls (Adama Turay, Claire Dumortier, Saraiah Hoover, and Anastasia Kudin) stepped back on the track for the 4x400m and did even better, upgrading to a 2nd place finish! Their time of 4:08.58 is #2 in Mercer County and #17 in New Jersey.
The WW-P South boys got a top-10 finish from their SMR team, which was 10th in 3:52.01.