At a scrimmage meet in Santa Fe on Friday, the Academy for Tech and Classics, Lucy Hutchison hands off to Veronica Hutchison in the 4x100 relay. Photo by Tim Host.
Scrimmages were the rule in cooler portions of the state such as Gallup and Santa Fe (results from this scrimmage posted at the bottom of this article), but full-blown meet fever is gradually working its way out from Las Cruces in all directions.
El Paso Irvin Boys Invitational
This weekend wasn't the first weekend in history that Alamogordo split its boys and girls teams. Neither is it likely to be the last time the Tigers go their separate ways. The girls headed to Santa Teresa, while the boys made the trip to El Paso. As happens with all early-season trips, Alamogordo learned a few things.
Among those things learned is that Chrisanto Fierro is a much-improved thrower over last year. Fierro threw a discus PR discus of 146-11 at last year's state meet. Coming out of the gate of this season, he launches one to 155-0. There's probably a smiling throws coach wearing Tiger black and gold today. But, maybe even more impressive was Fierro's improvement in his shot put. Fierro dabbled around, but under, 40 feet last year. This year, he opens the season at 44-4. It's a good start to Fierro's senior season.
Other highlights for Alamogordo included a 51.39 400 from Mark Haywood, and a sweep of the 100 and 200 by Devin Enslen in 11.03 and 22.41. For the first weekend in March, those kind of sprint times will stand up pretty well. Enslen we knew a lot about already from last year. Haywood is a newer name on the scene, but one of the beauties of the start of each season is learning newer names of folks who have taken their performances up a notch or two over last year.
Santa Teresa Invitational
Ah, the blessings and curses of technology... The timing system worked through the prelims but a sensor failure relegated the finals to handheld times. Meet results are as shown in the results sent from the meet. For MileSplit rankings purposes, the times from the sprint and hurdle finals have been adjusted according to the established norms in track and field for handling handheld times.
But, a meet is about more than the timing system, so we'll quickly turn our attention to the performances turned in and not spend unnecessary time lamenting what we have no control over.
Mayfield's Kacee Ramos crushed the 100 meter dash competition for the second weekend in a row. Hers just might be a name that ends up on your Marilyn Sepulveda meet program. We'll keep an eye on that situation.
Onate's Meghan Aguilera tripled up the longer events and won all three with times of 2:24.2, 5:22.9, and 11:34.7. That makes five wins in five tries on the season, but if you remember her cross country season, none of this is coming as a great surprise. Regina Marquez went 5:34 and 11:47 for very nice early-season seconds. Onate's Leiyona Young missed a high jump title at 5-2 only on misses, and then nailed down her second second with a 34-3 in the triple jump. The triple jump title went to teammate Maisha Grant at 34-6. Alamogordo's Virginia Norwood took the long jump title at 16-6 and the 200 title at 27.15 after running 26.74 in prelims. A little late-meet fatigue is understandable at this point in the season.
Highlights from the boys side of the picture included a second solid week of hurdle results for Isaiah McIntyre with a FAT time of 15.68 being his best mark of the day. McIntyre added a 20-3.5 for second in the long jump. Andrew Thatcher of Las Cruces took both the prelims and finals of the 300 hurdles with a FAT mark of 41.59 in prelims standing out as the better of the two marks. Torion Brown (Las Cruces) extended his season's best throw in the shot put to 49-10, but it was Silver High School that commanded most of the attention from the throwing venues. Posting noteworthy 3A marks were Brandon Molina (45-9, shot put, 137-10 discus) and Dakota Bencomo (127-3, javelin). Silver already has the look a team determined to defend their 3A state title from last spring. And, finally, Onate's Cornelius Rowe won three of four sprint races on the day, taking the prelims in both the 100 and 200, plus the finals in the 100. The 200 finals got away from him, but it was still a good day.
On-Site Coverage
Socorro, Santa Teresa Hosting Meets This Weekend
The meet action slated for this weekend in New Mexico is double what it was last weekend.
Meet Results
Boys Highlights
- Pole Vault - Paulo Benavides (El Paso Franklin) 15-0;
Zimmerly Relays
The smaller school contingent got this one rolling at a meet with Ruidoso, School of Dreams, Hot Springs, and Hatch Valley squaring off on Socorro's track. Competition was sparse in some events and keen in others. A quick once-over on the meet suggests the following:
1. For a team that was pretty good in cross country last fall, Ruidoso seems kind of sprint-heavy and distance-light this spring. We'll see if that's just a first-meet-of-the-season kind of thing or a season-long trend. The top sprint performance was an 11.1h 100 from Devon Carr.
2. Any way you look at it, the 52.97 from Hatch Valley's Thomas Cisneros suggests he has excellent potential to be toeing the line in Albuquerque on May 10.
3. Ryan Flack of Ruidoso (this Ryan is a female) seems to be positioning herself nicely among 3A hurdlers, winning the 100s in 17.51h and the 300s in 50.66h. Those times should only get better as the season moves forward. Hurdles are generally an event that sees a lot of improvement over the course of a track season.
4. It's interesting to note that a freshman won the boys javelin throw. Socorro's own Justin Sarate took those honors at 119-10. While on the subject of throws, Ruidoso senior Mathew Carr took the other two throws titles at 45-5.25 and 130-3, both decent enough early season marks.
Santa Fe Area Small Schools Scrimmage Results