By JOHN McCALLUM
Editor
If the four members of Cheney's girls' 4x100 relay team ever got to meet Milorad Cavic, they would have something in common to talk about.
The Serbian was edged by U.S. swimmer Michael Phelps by 1/100th of a second in the 100-meter butterfly at last summer's Olympic Games; settling for a silver medal. Last Saturday at the 2A state championship track meet at Mt. Tahoma High School in Tacoma, the Blackhawks' girls' team of Mikaela Young, Emily Stralser, Crystal Simmons and Shelby Maurer were denied a 2A state title by the same margin, finishing second to a foursome from Burlington-Edison.
Unlike Cavic, however, who pulled up too soon at the wall allowing Phelps to touch first, Cheney anchor Maurer simply ran out of room in trying to catch the Tigers' Michelle Kennedy – finishing with a team time of 49.66 seconds, just back of B-E's 49.65.
“It's tough to get any closer to a state championship – 1/100ths of a second,” Hawks' girls' head coach Tom Stralser said. “If Shelby had another foot, she would have caught that girl.”
The 4x100 team had one of the two top-three finishes giving the Hawks' girls 29 points and lifting them to a sixth-place team finish overall. The 4x200 team of Maurer, Shaley Ham, Stralser and Simmons turned in good marks – especially Ham – to finish third with a time of 1:46.75, about a quarter second behind second-place River Ridge and not quite three-quarters of a second back of state champion Blaine.
Stralser led the Hawks' girls in individual events, finishing fourth in the 100-meter hurdles with a time of 15.70. Maurer turned in times of 12.58 and 26.04 for sixth and fifth in the 100 and 200 respectively, while Young got the only medal for the Cheney girls in field events, finishing fifth in the triple jump with a leap of 34 feet, 5 ¾ inches.
“I was expecting more, going there, it just didn't happen,” Stralser said of his team, which captured the Great Northern League's regular-season crown along with a District 7 title.
“Top six in state is not bad,” he added regarding a young team that finished eighth at state last season. “The state meet is an unforgiving place. Sixth place is not chopped liver.”
The Cheney boys also competed well but came up a few points short of equaling last year's 10th place finish, scoring 23 points overall to finish tied with Steilacoom for 13th.
The Hawks had four athletes place in the top eight in five events. Junior DeAngelo Jones smashed his previous personal record by almost two feet, going 45-02 ½ for third place in the triple jump, finishing just over three feet behind River Ridge senior Miles Coats' first-place leap of 48-06 ½. Jones also went 20-10 for eighth place in the long jump.
“He's only been jumping for about six weeks, and a lot of these guys, these seniors, have been jumping for years,” boys' head coach Todd Hering said.
Sophomore Nathaniel Youmans posted top-eight finishes in the long and triple jumps along with Jones, going 21-04 ¼ for fifth in the former and 43-5 ½ for seventh in the latter. Senior Jeff Rodgers wrapped up his career with a throw of 148-09 for sixth in the discus.
Diondre Moore-Young captured a pair of medals on the track. The sophomore set new PRs in both the 110 and 300 hurdles with times of 14.93 and 41.20 for fourth and seventh place respectively.
In fact, Moore-Young finished the 300 in seventh twice. The race had to be rerun after a hurdle was set too high in another runner's lane, creating an unfair advantage for the rest.
Both Hering and Stralser said they felt good about the season, with both teams capturing league and district titles. The Hawks will lose a group of seniors that provided leadership along with talent, six girls and 11 boys, but return a sizeable number of underclassmen, many of who made significant improvements in their respective events.
In speaking about his girls' squad, Stralser may have summed up the outlook for both teams.
“We're going to be OK,” he said. “We're going to reload.”
John McCallum can be reached at [email protected]
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