Virginia's most dominant sprinter this past spring in Marlena Wesh of Landstown, will be focusing only on individual events at Nike Outdoor Nationals. Wesh, a Nike Indoor Nationals champion in the 200 meter dash, has been competing mainly in relay action at national level meets including two outstanding legs at Nike Indoor in the 4x100 and 4x400 which included a anchor leg in the 4x200 meter relay that gave the Virginia Beach school a national title over Eleanor Roosevelt. Wesh shined again in relay action at Penn Relays helping her team to strong showings in the Championships of America finals in both the 4x100 and 4x400 meter relay including a state record breaking performance of 3:42.77 in the qualifying heat for their 4x400.
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Photo by John Herzog
The Landstown junior has simply obliterated the competition in Virginia every time she has stepped on the track this spring, but has not raced anything higher than 200 meters leading up to Nike Outdoor Nationals. She will be running in section two of five of the 400 meter dash on Saturday, which could be interesting to see if she could be a spoiler in the event and steal a national title from the slower section. Winning from a slow section is nothing new for Wesh as she pulled off the feat at the Virginia 3A state indoor meet in March in the 55 meter dash. She has a lifetime personal best of 56.82 from her sophomore year, but even then it was a rare appearance for Wesh at 400 meters and run in a low-key age group summer meet. A team cannot run a state record time of 3:42 without some smoke on anchor leg as Wesh was certainly splitting in the 53's at Franklin Field. She need a 53 or better performance though in the open 400 in Greensboro from the slow section to beat the top times from the fast section which include Natalie Stewart of Utah at 53.49, Brianna Nelson of South Carolina at 53.52, Diamond Richardson of Texas at 53.78, and Michelle Brown of New Jersey at 53.91.
A win in the 400 meter dash will be a surprise and against the odds for Wesh as she is not even seeded as the fastest Virginian in section two with Bethany Hyter of Osbourn Park coming in with a season best time of 55.38, but obviously not of the question with the level which Wesh has raised her game to this year. Her times in the 100 and 200 meter dash indicate this rise for her as she made it look so easy in winning state titles in the 100 and 200 meter dash this spring as well as titles indoors in the 55 and 300 meter dash.
Photo by John Herzog
The 200 meter dash seems to have opened up well for Wesh in Greensboro to repeat as a Nike champion in the event from Nike Indoor in Landover. She has the 19th fastest time in the nation for the 200 meter dash this spring at 23.81, but actually has the second fastest time among all entrants behind only Chalonda Goodman of Georgia as it appears some of the ladies ranked ahead of Wesh are either headed to compete for World Juniors spots this weekend at USATF Junior Nationals or have opted to not compete in ether meet this weekend and close down their seasons. Wesh is ready to roll faster than her season best as shown with breaking 24 seconds at the Virginia 3A State Meet in the finals despite having to run in 1/8 inch spikes. As she commented after the state meeet, "I can't wait for Puerto Rico and Nike where I can wear any spikes that I want to wear." She will still have her hands full with Goodman who is the returning Nike Outdoor Nationals champion in both the 100 and 200 meter dash. Goodman's wins last year were surprises, but wins again this year will not be and she will be the favorite. Wesh might have other plans on who will win the 200 meter dash national title.
She may be a year away from making a serious run at making it onto the US team from the World Juniors team and appears to doing the right things so far to setup for a big senior year. Wesh has a shot at Nike Outdoor to build upon her success from last weekend in her first international meet at the Caribbean Scholastic Invitational in Puerto Rico, where she won both the 100 and 200 meter dash.