By Heidi Seaborn
Special to the Reporter
Mercer Island boys and girl’s track and field teams finished 10th in the district championships, sending nine athletes to the State Championship at Mt. Tahoma in Tacoma May 24-26.
Mercer Island walked off with top honors at in the girl’s javelin at the 3A Sea-King District championship. Senior Carly Andersen easily grabbed first place with a throw of 121-11 and senior Lauren Ellis placed third with a personal best of 114-04 to send both girls to state. Peter Brockway, a senior, is also headed to state in the javelin with a throw of 164-10 and a fourth place finish. The top five finishers qualify for state.
Sophomore Eric Shulz came in fourth as well in his 800-meter race with a time of 1:55.72. Sarah Bjarnson was literally elbowed out of a top five finish in the girl’s 800-meter and had to settle for sixth place as did fellow sophomore Alida Scalzo in the 3,200-meter and 1,600-meter races.
The boy’s 4×100 relay of junior Risley Lesko and seniors Nicky Sinclair, Josh Wong and Jeff Lindquist put up their best time this year of 43.59 in the preliminary race on Wednesday and came close to that to finish fourth in the final race with a time of 43.64.
“The 4×100 relay team reached their goal of going to state. However, they still have work to do on that final handoff,” said head coach Lezley Smith. “If they get that fixed, they will not only do well at state, but should break the school record of 43.05.”
The final event of the 3A SeaKing District championships showed the competitive spirit of the Islanders when the 4×400 boys relay took to the track Friday night. The relay team of senior sprinters Sinclair and Lindquist and sophomore distance runners Daniel Mayer and Eric Shultz came into the finals in seventh place in their first time running together as a relay.
“For our first outing as a relay, we did pretty well, but we knew we had to shave a few seconds off our time to get to State, and we that we had to stay close to Seattle Prep who we thought would be in fourth.” said Sinclair.
In the end, Seattle Prep did finish fourth, but the Mercer Island team blew past them for a third place finish behind powerhouses Bellevue and Liberty with a time of 3:25.49. Together they took seven seconds off their time, and each had personal best split times. After only two outings as a relay team, the 4x400m Islanders are now ranked fifth in state.
A full schedule of track events can be found online at wiaa.com.
