The track and field team competed in the Sac-Joaquin Section finals on May 8 at Chavez High School in Stockton.
Two individual athletes and one relay team raced for Country Day.
Senior Heidi Johnson had a long jump of 16 feet, 6 inches, missing the mark to qualify for the Masters by one inch.
“I wasn’t really sad about missing out on Masters because I knew that it would be a stretch to even qualify for it, and my main event is triple jump anyway,” Johnson said. “I would have liked to do better, but I lightly sprained my ankle during warmups, and my quad was a little strained.”
Johnson said her main focus was to prepare for the Section triple jump on May 10. Johnson was the only Country Day athlete scheduled to compete on the second day of the meet.
Junior Charles Thomas finished the 400 meters in 54.66 seconds, just under a second slower than his personal best. His placement was unavailable.
“I could have paced myself better while running,” Charles said. “But I was happy with not just my growth throughout the season, but that of the whole team’s. However, none of this could have happened without the help of our coach, Rick Fullum.”
The boys 4×100-meter relay team consisted of Thomas, sophomore Kenyatta Dumisani and freshmen Elliot Crowder and Craig Bolman. Crowder ran the first leg and handed off to Thomas. Bolman ran the third leg, and Dumisani finished for the team. The team’s placement and time were unavailable.
Thomas and Bolman agreed that they could have shaved off a couple of seconds had their handoff been better.
“The height difference between us made it difficult because I started a little too slow, and Charles caught up with me really fast, so it was hard to complete the handoff,” Bolman said.
Bolman added that being in Lane 9 (the farthest from the inside) on the curve affected his run.
—By Arjin Claire
