By Senior Correspondent Marty Ogden, Editing, Photos and Graphics by Ron Knapp
Amazingly, the CT State Records for boys and girls were both set within minutes of each other early Saturday afternoon in the championship sections of the 3000m at the Yale Interscholastic Track Classic on Coxe Cage’s 200m banked track in New Haven.
Girls 3000m
If there is Mount Rushmore of CT girl distance runners, you must include Ceci Hopp, Liz Mueller, Hannah Debalsi and Danae Rivers. Well it might be time to find some more room on that mountain for Glastonbury’s Brooke Strauss who won the 3000, in a US #1 time of 9:30.58. Her time broke Hopp’s 44-year old state record by three seconds. For those of you too young to remember, Hopp won the Kenney (now Footlocker) National Championships, several NCAA championships and even the USATF National 5000m title in 1994.
Strauss, who has committed to UConn, went through the 800m in 2:29 and the 1600m in an incredible 5 minutes flat, good enough to win the championship mile later in the day. Her time also broke the 13-year old meet record by Samantha Nadel by just over a second and would convert to a 3200m performance of about 10:12.
Strauss lapped all but the next two next two finishers. Her teammate Lauren Parrett held her off on the home stretch and didn’t get lapped. Her 3rd place time of 10:06.09 is not only the 14th best time in CT history but is also the top freshman time in the nation.
Boys 3000m
There are some distance runners who are grinders and just make you hurt until you can’t hang on any more and others who can stay relaxed off a fast pace and still have a lethal kick at the end. Xavier’s Jack Ouellette is one of the latter. His teammate Owen Martin led the field with a sizable lead for the first 2000m and went through the 1600m in 4:33 with the pack just over two seconds behind. Amity’s Luke Cushing put himself into the lead to keep the pace honest but with two laps to go, the lead pack had dwindled to three with Ouellette lurking in second place behind William Smitas of Guilderland. But Ouellette, a Boston University commit, swung wide off the final turn to walk down the New York runner in a time of 8:28.58, the US # time and a new CT state record.
He broke the Eric van der Els record by just a half second at this meet nine years ago. The Brien McMahon alum was a sub 4-minute miler for UConn and made the finals in the 5000m this summer in the US Olympic…
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