Richmond Ahadzi and his looked up at the JumboTron hovering above the track, waiting for a time to show up.
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ITHACA – Alex Hatz shook his head in the kind of “aw shucks,” fashion. Not because he lost his race, he didn’t. Hatz just didn’t execute perfectly. He left it get too close. Well, too close for him.
They all looked at each other with a mix of excitement and confusion. It was the kind of face that asks, “Did that just happen?”
They didn’t start a big celebration or round up the team for a victory lap. They accepted their award, smiled for pictures, packed up and left. They had done all this before.
Sheepshead Bay sulked down the staircase and started to trudge over to the midfield. Coach John Padula had just laid into them about all the lost opportunities. Thinking all the while that the Sharks had lost by two points.
Veronica Campbell-Brown hoped for more. The opportunity was there. Sheri-Ann Brooks pressed her the entire way but Campbell never let her close enough.
She didn’t want to celebrate early. A couple times already, she brushed the high jump a couple times earlier and she watched those bars shake until they dropped.
The last time Haddonfield’s Jon Vitez took the baton for the anchor leg of the distance medley relay, he felt great for the first few steps. Then his baton hit the runner’s foot to his outside and the stick clink-clinking to the infield, blowing the race and robbing spectators of a showdown between Vitez and West Orange’s Curtis Richburg.
Johnathan Shawel of Notre Dame looked gassed, like someone ad threw quick-dry cement in his path and Villanova’s Carl MacKenzie fought like mad to get around. Then just when it seemed Shawel might walk to the finish he accelerated again and MacKenzie hit the wall.
The first time Villanova’s Sheila Reid crossed the finish line she smiled wide after she crushed the last 200 meters, leaving the field in her wake on her way to winning the 1,000 meters at the Big East Championships.
Marie Louise Asselin sprawled herself on the track a few meters from the finish line and reached her hand out to West Virginia teammate Clara Grandt for an exhausted low-five. They both got NCAA automatic qualifier they were looking for and owed each other a bit of thanks as well.
Some of New York and the nation’s best will compete as United States as members of Team Jamaica Bickle at the Gibson Relays in Jamaica next Saturday.
New Rochelle coach Rosalind Gallino swore her team had run out of ammunition. North Rockland coach Gene Dall thought the same about his squad. Mount Vernon was poised the snatch the whole thing. But that’s why teams snatch and claw for points early.
Many times championship meets, especially ones that feature traditionally powerhouse teams, boil down to who can last the longest – like two heavyweight boxers waiting for the other to punch himself out. In those cases, the team that has one superstar – that one towering right hook – is the team that leaves with the hardware.
If track and field had buzz-beaters it would be like this. Fordham Prep simply needed to score to win. That meant a fifth-place finish.
When St. Anthony’s coach Oliver St. Aude opened his email Saturday morning he did not see the kind of encouraging messages one hopes to get before a championship competition. Instead he saw a bunch of emails from team members who wouldn’t make it to the meet.
Melissa Kurzdorfer walked into the shot put circle for the last of her four attempts in the shot put. But just before she went in she turned to her coach.
Nick Vena’s best throws crashed into the left side of the cage. But even those throws bounced somewhere around 68 feet. That means that even on his “off” days, Vena is the best thrower in the country.
Neither Blake Heriot nor Brady Gehret had raced 300 meters before. Yet, in two different sections of the junior boys 300 they notched the two fastest times in the country this season.
LSU’s Walter Henning can call the Armory home. He knows everyone in the building. Even more people know him. Plus he spent endless hours camping out by the throwers’ cage for countless weekends as high schooler at St. Anthony’s on Long Island.
When Melissa Kurzdorfer let the weight go, she let out the sort of primal yell that accompanies throwing events as a matter of custom. But the scream turned from a release of tension to a signal of terror while Lancaster’s star thrower started to tip out the throwing circle.
Ryan McDermott had one of those moments. It was the kind of moment that instigates multiple cell phone calls and tell the same story over and over and over yet each time with a renewed excitement. He already had the story laid out for him. All the Duke senior needed to do was secure the happy ending.
Ryan McDermott had one of those moments. It was the kind of moment that instigates multiple cell phone calls and tell the same story over and over and over yet each time with a renewed excitement. He already had the story laid out for him. All the Duke senior needed to do was secure the happy ending.
D.J. Thornton spent most of his mile race in the front, running all alone. It seemed sort of fitting. Injury kept the Union Catholic (Scotch Plains, N.J.) senior out of all the biggest invitational miles this season.
NEW YORK – It seemed perfect. Bernard Lagat sat exactly where he needed to be with Asbel Kiprop of Kenya taking on all the work while he drafted and Great Britian’s Andy Baddeley kept him honest from behind. (Photo by Mary DiBiase Blaich/wingedfootfotos.com)
NEW YORK – She looked like she had climbed a mountain or finally shouldered down a locked door that she pounded on for years. When Cory McGee finally snapped the finish line tape all she could do was stand there and take a second to enjoy a moment that teased her for her entire high school career.
NEW YORK – Cardozo’s Ahtyana Johnson laid sprawled long the floor in a corridor behind the track. She had nothing left.
NEW YORK – It wasn’t that Chelsea Johnson hated the pole vault. She just wanted no part of it. That was her dad’s thing. She wanted her own thing.
The press conference just ended which is always a good time for a photo op. So Willie Gault backed up in front of a wall of Millrose Games and Visa logos and put his fist up, then Tim Dwight joined him in a fight stance, like two boxers poising for flashing cameras before a Vegas main event.
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