By Senior Correspondent Marty Ogden, Editing and Graphics by Ron Knapp
This was a big weekend for track and field in Connecticut, but the highlight of the past two days was the 39th Yale HS Track Classic held at Coxe Cage in New Haven. The Yale invitational brought together teams from all over the Northeast to compete on their lightning fast 200m banked track. As one coach put it, “this is the weekend where we try to put the pieces together to help us contend for the championships at the end of the season.”
Connecticut athletes certainly stepped up and set many personal and quite a few school records. After two days of competing, social media was exploding with announcements of school records that were broken and outstanding performances from their athletes in relays and individual events.
Boys Field Events
Boys Long Jump
Another athlete who has had a steady improvement this season is Amity’s Micah Blair. The senior won the long jump in 22-1.5 and has already improved well over a foot in three competitions this season and is ranked 3rd in the state. He also ran a new PR in the 55m hurdles of 7.87 to take 3rd. This now gives CT eight athletes under 7.90 already this season in this highly competitive event.
Boys High Jump
Coming into the meet, there were three athletes tied for the state lead at 6-7, but Ja’Mari Manson of Bloomfield broke the log jam as he won the high Jump 6-7 which is now 4th nationally. Hillhouse’s Khalil Antoine was one of those tied at 6-6, jumped 6-5, good for the runner up spot , while Enaji Muhammad of Branford improved on his lifetime best to clear 6-4 to give CT jumpers the top three spots.
Boys Pole Vault
The pole vault is starting to heat up as two CT boys went over 14 feet. Hall’s Liam Wright, the outdoor track Open champion competed in his first meet of the season, tying his indoor PR and taking 2nd with a clearance of 14-6. Meanwhile Hunter Feitel of Xavier finished 3rd at 14-0 in a preview of this year’s Open champions that will surely have big implications in the team battle as well.
Boys Shot put
If Xavier is going to have a shot at some team hardware, they are going to need more than just their outstanding distance runners. It seems they are beginning to become a more complete program. Besides Stylz Mitchell who ran with the 400m leg of the winning DMR with the flu on Friday night and Feitel in the pole vault, you can now add Jacob Harkins to the list of…
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