By Leonard COUTIN

The Pacific League track and field prelims were hosted at Arcadia High School last Friday; the running of several heats caused the meet to run over six hours. The varsity field athletes did not have to qualify in the prelims.

The athletes tested their strength against their rivals from each of the schools with the top nine qualifying for the League finals that will be held again at Arcadia on May 5, starting at 5 p.m. for field events. Spectators and students should be aware that there would be an admission fee for entrance to the Pacific League finals.

While all of the athletes geared themselves up just to qualify for the finals many individuals entered more than two or three events. The only event that was considered to be final scoring was the frosh soph 3200m races.

CV’s Manan Vats captured third place running 10:12.50 behind Burbank’s Jahir Olvera (10:00.8) who placed second and winner Apache Sochiro Nagao (9:58.6). Vats pushed the pace keeping with the top two runners for most of the seven laps.

CV’s Melissa Owens was able to place seventh running 12:35 while Joyce Wu of Arcadia won with a time of 11:48.0.

Starting in the early afternoon, athletes faced both the hot sun and gusts of wind in their faces.

“We are very happy with the number of athletes we were able to move on to finals,” said CV Head Coach Mark Evans. “It was tough for everyone because of the wind, but we competed well and did not let anything affect our ability to compete. We are looking forward to what we can do in League finals on Friday.”

Some of the Falcon girls to advance are Jessy Shelton, who returned to the track after several weeks off due to an injury and qualified both in the 100m and 200m. Teammate Clair Schlueter will also advance in the 100m and will participate in her jumping events as well as run the 4×100 relay with Shelton. Jestena Galvan advances in both the 100H and 300H. Teammate Kristina Carrillo also advances in the 300H running the second best time of the day (47.70). Isabella Lieberman will run the 400m qualifying with a 63.67 time and in the 200m running 27.64.

Falcon Colin FitzGerald will lead the assault against the League competitors in the distances, qualifying in the 800m and 1600m races. Dylan Wilbur ran a fast time in the 800m running 1:59.43. Artin Allahverdian and teammate Zach Johnson qualified in the 1600m. Nick Tralongo will run both the 200m and 400m and Jaedin Springfield will run the 100m and 200m races.

  Leonard Coutin