Track & Field: Douglas comes out strong despite vacation-depleted roster

The Douglas High School track & field team put together its second solid showing at a home four-way meet against Carson, Damonte Ranch and Elko last week.

The girls' team edged Carson for first place while the boys' had a number of strong individual performances on its way to a third-place finish.

"The girls edged out a pretty good team in Carson," Douglas head coach Jim Abbott said. "Some of our key athletes were away on spring break, so it felt pretty good for them to be performing that well against some of the top teams in the area."

Junior Jessica Gorton enjoyed a particularly strong day, winning the 110 hurdles with a time of 17.47, winning the 300 hurdles in 49.44 and winning the long jump with a leap of 15 feet, 7 inches.

Just for good measure, she also took second in the triple jump at 33-4.

Gorton led a top four sweep in the long jump as Natasha Brown (14-11), Liz Nickles (14-7) and Shannon Sturgess (13-1) rounded out the event for the Tigers.

Douglas' Sarah Hartley won the triple jump at 33-9, followed by Gorton and Brown in third with 32-3.

Douglas claimed the remaining jump events as freshman Kyra Barth (5-0) won the high jump and Bridget Maestretti took first in the pole vault. (7-3). Cami Arend took second in the high jump at 4-10.

"We had some really good performances in the jumping events overall," Abbott said."

Junior Jessica Waggoner won the shot put with a throw of 35-10 and took second in the discus at 90-6.

Another highlight for the girls was Hartley taking third in the 400 with a time of 1:01.47.

"Her times are coming down quickly," Abbott said. "The girl from Carson (Christy Works) ran a 59.47, so that pushed her a good bit."

Other scorers for the girls included Jackson taking fifth in both the 110 hurdles and the 100, the 4x100 relay team taking first, Brown taking third in the 200, Amanda Boyd taking third in the 3,200 and the 4x400 team taking third.

On the boys' side, one of the bigger surprises of the day came in the 100 as senior Curtis Hartzell was solid as always, taking second in 11.14, but underclassmen Jordan Cruz came out of nowhere to take first with an 11.02.

"Curtis ran really well again and Jordan came up with a big race," Abbott said. "He is really starting to come around for us. He ran well in the 200 the week before and he is definitely one to keep an eye on. He could really help us out in the future."

Senior Derrick Jenkins put up some big points for the Tigers, winning the 1,600 in 4:45.07, winning the 800 in 2:03.04, taking second in the high jump at 5-10 and running a strong second leg for the third-place 4x400 team.

"Derrick lowered his personal best time in the 1,600 by about seven or eight seconds and put up his best time of the year in the 800," Abbott said.

Jake O'Farrell won the 200 with a 22.12 while Hartzell took second in 22.21 and Cruz took fifth with a 23.06.

Andrew Dewitt won the shot put with a 42-1 and took third in the discus with a 116-9.

Another highlight of the day was Mark Pieters scoring his first varsity points after a number of years running with the team as he took fifth in the 3,200 at 13:06.

"He was pretty excited," Abbott said. "He's been working hard and he ran a great race. I was very proud of him."

Ryan Ake finished fourth in the 110 hurdles at 18.95 and Chris Winberg took fifth in the 300 hurdles at 46.9 and fifth in the 110 hurdles at 19.29

To round out Douglas' scoring on the day, Johnny Pollack took fourth in the 300 hurdles with a 46.4, Brad Boyd took third in the 800 with a 2:13.64 and fourth in the 1,600 with a 4:58.18, the 4x400 team took third, Anthony Barkley took fourth in the triple jump with a 35-3 and Junior Pacheco took fourth in the high jump with a leap of 5-4.

The meet also marked the first time Douglas was able to try out its new digital timing system.

"It worked really well," Abbott said. "It'll be a slick setup once we master it.

"We were dual timing this meet, they were hand-timing it at field level and we were practicing with the digital timer. It worked really well and it'll be great to use in the future. It's so exact that we could pick out kids less than two-hundredths of a second apart."