sportkingston Staff
Claude Scilley |
Brought To You By
|
| |
Home > Articles > High School Sports > Jaros, Zohorsky lead Kingston-area contingent at EOSSA track
Jaros, Zohorsky lead Kingston-area contingent at EOSSA track
Posted: May 25th, 2013 @ 3:11am
By CLAUDE SCILLEY
BROCKVILLE - So, Brad Hill was asked on a day so cold perspiration was afraid to form, would conditions this chilly be apt to favour any particular type of athlete at a track and field meet?
Suspecting the bundled-up Hall of Fame coach might opine that it would be advantageous for, say, runners used to training for a fall cross-country season, the inquisitor eagerly awaited the reply.
"Yeah," Hill sniffed. "It favours the athletes who are smart enough not to complain about it."
Evidently, there were a few of those competitors representing Kingston-area schools Friday on the final day of the Eastern Ontario Secondary School Athletic Association championships at Thousand Islands Secondary School.
Foremost among them would be La Salle junior runner Heather Jaros and midget-age hurdler Nicole Zohorsky of Bayridge. The two athletes each finished the two-day meet with three individual victories.
Zohorsky benefitted from the wisdom of her older sister, Katie.
"She said that it doesn't matter, everyone's going to be set back because of the weather, so just run your own race," said Nicole, a first-year high school competitor. "She's been a big help this year, because she's gone through it all."
Zohorsky won the 100 metres and 80-metre hurdles Friday, after placing first in the 300-metre hurdles Thursday night. She said the unseasonable weather that had athletes huddled in tents and seeking refuge on buses, shivering not in sweat clothing but winter jackets, had an impact on her sprint.
"The rain and the cold set me back a little and my times were a lot lower in the preliminaries," she said. "It just pushed me to do better in the final."
Jaros had the right idea from the start - she let the dreadful conditions to which she awoke Friday bring a smile to her face.
"I was happy, excited," she said. "It was a little windy but the weather was nice.
"I prefer running in this weather to a sunny day. I don't like running in the heat."
The evidence supporting the veracity of that belief was substantial.
After taking a whopping 11 seconds off the modern record in junior girls 1,500 metres Thursday evening - when she won in 4 minutes, 38.05seconds, almost 35 seconds ahead of the rest of the field - Jaros won both the 3,000 and 800 metres Friday, both, by the way, also in record time.
In the 3,000, she took 20 seconds off the record former Physi-Kult teammate Clara Langley set three years ago. Jaros finished that race in 10 minutes 26.77 seconds, then waited almost a minute - 52.81 seconds, to be exact - for the second-place runner to cross the finish line.
In the 800, raced about two and a half hours later, Jaros won in 2 minutes 14.96 seconds, two and a half seconds better than the nine-year-old modern record of Opeongo's Melissa Bishop.
In field events, the wind was troublesome, blowing in the faces of jumpers and pole-vaulters. It blew across the fields where competitors were throwing discus and javelins, where soggy grounds compromised both footing and grip.
As a result, not a single record was broken in any of the field disciplines.
The conditions "weren't ideal," said Kenya Costa-Dookhan of Holy Cross, who contested senior girls triple jump Friday morning when the weather was at its most, er, challenging.
"That was really hard due to the rain and the wind at the same time, and the temperature wasn't that great," Costa-Dookhan said. "It made it really hard to warm up.
"The wind is the biggest thing with jumping. It can either help you or hurt you. (This morning) it was coming towards me. Triple jump was worst."
To overcome the meteorological misfortune, Costa-Dookhan listened to music, calmed herself down and "realized that the conditions are the same for everyone else."
"Everyone's at that disadvantage," she said.
After winning the event last week, Costa-Dookhan finished second in the triple jump to Loyalist's Jasmyn Castilloux, who was runner-up at the county championship last week. In the afternoon, when the sun came out - well, actually, the sky was just a lighter shade of gray - the roles were reversed. Costa-Dookhan came up with her best jump on her last attempt and finished first, ahead of Castilloux.
"This pit seems to like me and I like it," Costa-Dookhan said of the facility where she not only established her personal best at the regional meet last year, but came within a centimetre of winning a medal at OFSAA.
"I would definitely like to make the final again this year and hopefully do better," she said, "but the first step is next week, qualifying on to OFSAA, so I'll concentrate on that and then think ahead."
The top five finishers in each event at this week's meet qualified to compete at the East regional meet, next Thursday and Friday in Belleville. From there, the top four competitors will advance to the Ontario Federation of School Athletic Associations championships, June 6-8 at Oshawa.
A number of Kingston-area athletes are going to the regional competition riding the crest of some outstanding performances in Brockville:
* Regi's Branna MacDougall, after breaking the EOSSA record in midget girls 1,500 metres Thursday night (leaving it at 4 minutes 48.52 seconds), won the 800 metres Friday.
* Isabelle Froom of Loyalist won senior girls 100 metres, then despite a troublesome hamstring followed that with a victory in the 200 metres.
* Cameron Linscott of Kingston won midget boys 1,500 and 3,000 metres, the latter with a 20-second margin of victory.
* Sydenham senior Wade Embury, who won the 400 metres - where Sydenham runners finished 1-2-4 - and 200 metres, ended the day by anchoring a Sydenham 1,600-metre relay team that won the fast section going away.
* Napanee junior Leah Hill and midget-age thrower Hailey Wolfgram of Regiopolis Notre Dame each won their respective shot put and discus competitions.
* Ernestown's Adrienne Morgan won senior girls 3,000 metres with a 50-second margin of victory. She was one of four KASSAA runners to capture a division of the 3,000.
Kingston-area athletes also showed particular affinity in shot put, where they won four of six events and qualified athletes to advance in all six divisions, and the sprint hurdles, where KASSAA girls captured six of nine medals - one of the others was won by Rideau District's Chelsea Wood - and four male hurdlers from Sydenham (including junior champion Brodie Latimer) qualified to move on.
In all, 25 athletes representing 11 different KASSAA schools won 35 events over the two days of competition. KASSAA schools also fielded two winning relay teams.Jar
Related Articles:
|
|
Support sportkingston
|
Follow sportkingston
|
Search
Looking for a specific article, person, event, or subject?
|
|
