A pair of midget-age competitors from the Kingston Area Secondary Schools Athletic Association continued their winning ways Friday at the 16th annual Michelle Foley Bay of Quinte Invitational high school track and field meet in Belleville.
Sarah Bell of Kingston Collegiate and Cole Horsman of Frontenac remain undefeated in both the 100 and 200 metres, winning Friday in convincing style.
Bell’s time in the 100, 12.83 seconds, was 28 one-hundredths of a second better than the runner-up, Tori Wentz of Bayridge, and her time in the 200, 26.70, was almost a second and a half ahead of Wentz, and half a second better than the time she ran at her previous meet.
At 11.22 seconds, Horsman was almost seven-tenths of a second ahead of the field in the 100 metres, and in the 200 his time, 23.36 seconds, was not only 1.4 seconds ahead of the pack, but for the second week in a row it was a time that would have placed him in the top five at OFSAA a year ago.
Both of those times are also under the modern KASSAA record in midget boys 200 metres, 24.4 seconds.
For both Bell and Horsman, it was the third-straight win in the 100, and the second-straight victory in the 200.
Those were just some of the terrific performances by Kingston-area athletes at Mary Ann Sills Park Friday, as Kingston schools were among 34 teams competing at the one-day event named for Michelle Foley, a splendid middle-distance runner who represented Frontenac at OFSAA in Grade 9 before her family moved to the Quinte region.
In all, local competitors won 21 events Friday.
KC’s Marissa Battle was the other local athlete to win two events, junior girls 100 and 200 metres, as she captured the latter event in 26.45 seconds, two seconds ahead of her nearest rival.
Among the top results by senior competitors were the victories of KC’s Ben Workman in the 800 metres, where, at 1 minute 58.72 seconds he was five seconds ahead of the field, and Frontenac’s Ben Cross, whose best attempt in javelin, 53.03 metres, was seven and a half metres beyond all the rest.
At the other end of the spectrum was the victory by Frontenac’s Omar Komeha in midget boys shot put, where he prevailed by just one centimetre, with a best attempt of 11.07 metres.
Collectively, the midget-age throwers from KASSAA had a marvellous day, winning five of the six events and posting top-three performances in all six. The other winners were La Salle’s Chelsea Heimstra (girls shot), Kaitlin Edwards (girls javelin) and Jeremy Piazzi (boys javelin), and Ryan Brown of Loyalist (boys discus).
In one of the more dramatic finishes on the Bruce Faulds track, the Sydenham boys won the open 1,600-metre relay, a race of more than three and a half minutes in which the top three teams were separated at the end by just 11 one-hundredths of a second. The winning time was 3:36.72.
A year ago, when Sydenham was 14th at OFSAA in 3:31.94, the male 4x400 team was second at this meet in 3:42.24.
The other winning performances by KASSAA competitors Friday were by Leah Hill of Napanee (senior girls shot put, 9.96 metres); KC’s Jaycee Farmer (senior girls 1,500 metres, 5 minutes 26.40 seconds); Cody Webb of La Salle (senior boys 400 metres, 53.67 seconds); Adam Burggraf of Bayridge (junior boys javelin, 43.96 metres); Lauren Carson of Loyalist (junior girls 80-metre hurdles, 13.60 seconds), Jacquelyn Quesnel of KC (junior girls 800 metres, 2 minutes 24.15 seconds) and Zack Froats-Crowder of Frontenac (midget boys triple jump, 11.87 metres).
In addition to their winning efforts, Quesnel was also second in the junior girls 1,500 metres, and Hill was third in senior girls discus.
Bayridge junior Maverick Snider was the only local competitor to post a top-three performance in three different individual events. He was second in both the long and triple jumps, and he was third in the 100 metres.
The Foley meet was the final pre-season meet of the high school season. The Kingston Area championships will be contested this week, starting Wednesday afternoon with events on the track at Caraco Field, starting with the intermediate hurdles at 3:30, and discus and javelin competitions at Richardson Stadium, beginning at 2 o’clock.
The bulk of the meet will be held Thursday at Caraco, commencing with the steeplechase at 9 a.m.