By Senior Correspondent Marty Ogden, Editing and Graphics by Ron Knapp
The Southwest Conference indoor track and field championships were held at the Floyd Little Athletic Center in New Haven on Saturday night as the Bethel boys defended their title while the Newtown girls reclaimed the girls top team award. Three meet records were reset while some serious additions were made in the top CT performance lists.
Joel Barlow’s Jordan Carr already holds the top ranking for CT pole vaulters from her winning 12-6 jump at the Yale Invitational. That height tied for the 2nd best jump in state history with only Emily Savage of Weston’s state record in front of her. First on her to-do list on Saturday was Savage’s meet record of 12-1 which she cleared on her 3rd attempt. After that, she had three solid attempts at Savage’s state record of 12-9, trying to best it by a half inch. While Carr didn’t clear it on Saturday, the junior still has the championship season to come and the remainder of her senior year to go for it.
One of the most accomplished sprinters to ever come out of the SWC was Weston’s Simeon Okoro who won the State Open and New England championships in 2015 in a conference record time of 34.89. He won three straight SWC 300m titles and held the meet record of 36.20. That record was knocked down by Immaculate sophomore Brenan McCabe who crossed the line in 36.09. As a freshman last year he won Class S in the 400m and broke 50-seconds to take 7th at the State Open.
Newtown’s Soheib Dissa is becoming one of the top distance runners in the nation and is preparing for the Millrose Games High School mile next Sunday. He still helped Newtown to a 3rd place finish in the team standings with an incredible triple. He started off the evening by breaking New England champion Stephen Tyler’s seven year-old meet record in the 1000m. His time of 2:32.12 bested the old standard by almost a second. He returned to help his team take 2nd in the 1600m SMR and finished the meet by holding off Bethel’s Evan Bureau by three tenths of a second by winning the 3200m in a time of 9:55.58.
Luke Richardson, the top ranked CT boy in the 55m, joined his Bethel teammates Daniel Cruz, Jackson Sorbello and Kyle Kurtz to win the 4x200m in a strong time of 1:34.53. Then he came back and just missed Thaddeus Bennett’s meet record by .01 seconds in the 55m. His time of 6.59 is just about a tenth of a second off his SWC record time of 6.48 from…
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