The track and field teams from Redwood, Tam, and Drake all competed in a tri-meet last Thursday. All entered the meet undefeated, except for Drake’s girls’ team, but only Tam left with an untarnished record.
Redwood competitors trained for over two weeks without any meets in preparation for the April 26 matchup, the last meet of the MCAL season. Both girls’ and boys’ teams placed second overall, while Drake took third.
According to sprinter and long jumper Zack Cooperband, the teams from Redwood and Tam are well matched.
“It was really close,” Cooperband, junior, said. “If either of us were having a really good day that would have decided it.”
According to junior Alex Ehrenberg, when the team compared Redwood’s statistics and rankings to those of Tam and Drake before the meet, the points were nearly too close to call.
“Tam and Drake are our top competitors, so you could tell a lot of people were ready to do their best,” said senior Julia Purcell. “I know a lot of people did rise to the occasion. Some people didn’t quite do so well, but I think that overall we did really well as a team.”
Ehrenberg said that going into the MCAL championships which are to be held next week, he is confident the results will work in Redwood’s favor.
“As a team, we train harder than anybody else, so we’re confident that we’ll go in there and do some amazing things,” Ehrenberg said. “What makes our team so special is that we have a great depth of runners. We’re strong across the board.”
Purcell was among the many track and field competitors who achieved personal records in the meet.
Purcell placed first in both shotput and discus, with personal bests of 30’4” and 103’9” respectively. In discus, Purcell beat the second place thrower by over 15 feet. Purcell is now ranked as the top discus thrower and shotputter in the MCAL league.
Cooperband, who ranked seventh in the county in the 100 meter dash and fifth in the 200 meter dash, tied his personal record in the 100 meter dash with a time of 11.2 seconds.
“I think in the end we all felt pretty good because of how many people got their personal records, and we felt pretty strong even though we lost,” said sophomore Lindsay Hendrickson.
Hendrickson is ranked as the fourth in the county for triple jump with a record of 33’9”, but she placed second in the meet behind a Tam jumper.
Sophomore Jackson Cooney, who is ranked fifth in the county for pole vaulting and ninth for high jump, tied for second in high jump and placed third in pole vaulting against Tam and Drake. Cooney said that attending invitational meets, the results of which don’t factor into teams’ MCAL records, helps him boost his performance.
Cooney recently achieved his personal pole vaulting record of 11’4” at the Chabot Invitational earlier this month.
Four long-distance runners attended the Mt. Sac Invitational Meet two weeks ago with the hope of beating the Marin County record for the 4×1600 relay, but were unsuccessful.
At the meet, held on April 20 in Los Angeles, professional athletes from around the world ran against both college and high school runners.
Senior Tommy Warfel, junior Kyle Ryan, and sophomores Fred Huxham and Jack Bullock clocked in slightly above the record of 18 minutes 5 seconds, set by Redwood runners in 1973.
The runners finished with a final time of 18 minutes 15 seconds, with an average individual mile time of 4 minutes 34 seconds.
“I was the last person running and by the time I got the baton, we were in a spot where I wasn’t close to anyone else, so I was running completely by myself,” Warfel said. “Our first leg ran pretty well because he was still with the whole group, but we slowly dropped off.”
The relay team finished 14th out of the 18 teams running in the fastest heat of the high school event.
Warfel said that because the 4×1600 relay is not featured at most meets, the Mt. Sac race was the team’s last opportunity to beat the record this year.
