Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Eagle track and field athletes come close, but fail to qualify

Belen gets one more tune-up for District 5-4A meet

Jason W. Brooks News-Bulletin Staff Writer; jbrooks@news-bulletin.com

Albuquerque Belen High School track and field coach Jim Edwards knew his teams weren't going to score a lot of team points against the likes of La Cueva, Los Alamos and Academy at last weekend's Richard Harper Memorial Invitational. But he also knew Belen headed to the meet at Albuquerque Academy with several events in which it was closing in on state qualifying.

"It's about what I expected," said Edwards after the Belen girls finished ninth at the two-day meet with 13 points and the boys were 11th with 11 points. "We were really close to state qualifying on a lot of things."

Belen's only state-qualifying performance of the meet happened in the last track event--the boys 1600-meter relay. Though the team of Nico Montoya, Stephen Berish, Jeremy Olguin and Ethan Durbin only qualified by .07 seconds, it was one of the bigger highlights for the Eagle teams at the meet.

At a venue that was a more of a showcase for the biggest Albuquerque-area teams and their top athletes, the Eagles still had a number of noteworthy performances.

Danie Bowman nearly qualified in the javelin Saturday, throwing 104-8. While her mark was fourth at the meet, she needs to throw 110 feet to qualify.

Some Eagles were even closer. Kelli Williams missed qualifying in the prelims of the 300-meter girls hurdles by 0.66 seconds. She wound up finishing eighth in the finals. The girls medley relay team missed by 0.97 seconds and was third, and the boys medley was also third and missed qualifying by 1.25 seconds.

The closest Eagle of all was Joshua Garcia. His sixth-place time in the 1600-meter run was only 0.19 seconds from qualifying.

Other highlights for Belen included Durbin's sixth-place finish in the boys 800 meters, Olguin's fourth-place effort in the boys high jump, Aleona Reyes' fifth-place finish in the 800 meters, and Bowman's fourth-place performance in the girls shot put.

Bowman was also sixth in the discus.

Edwards said three Belen pole vaulters — Wes Armstrong, Anthony Jaramillo and Dante Garcia — all reached new personal bests.

Conditions were breezy on Friday for the first day of the Harper Invite, but things were much more windy and cooler Saturday. Edwards said there were many more state qualifying efforts at the meet Friday than there were Saturday.

La Cueva took the girls team title easily, and had two strong performances to win the boys points trophy on the final field event, the long jump.

Belen heads to the Rio Rancho Invite this Saturday, and its last meet before state will be the District 5-4A meet at Academy on May 4-5.

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