By JOEL TIMBRELL
Special to the Tribune
The Alhambra Track team competed at the DFAL Varsity Trials and Finals League Championships at Campolindo High School last Tuesday, May 10, and Friday, May 13.
Competition included rival DFAL schools Dublin, Dougherty Valley, Las Lomas, Miramonte, Acalanes, and the Campo Cougars.
Most of the running events had trials on Tuesday and finals on Friday. All the field events were finals only. The top six finishers in each final event qualified for the NCS Tri-Valley Championships.
On Tuesday, several of the Alhambra Bulldogs put their names on the map with exceptional performances.
Marissa D’Atri was the first to qualify in the girls 1600 meters with a 5:25.41. She had a very similar result in the girls 800 meters, where she easily made it to the finals in 2 minutes, 26.01 seconds.
Hurdler Sienna Strickland surprised with two excellent races. In the girls’ 100 meter hurdles, Strickland edged out Las Lomas’s Rachel Morgan for the eighth and final qualifying place in a time of 18.54. She also made it to the finals in the girls’ 300 meter hurdles, and simultaneously broke into the Alhambra Top 10 records list with a 51.56 (10th all time).
In only his second race of the entire season (the first being a 100 meter dash in a dual meet), Noa Nabeshima posted the fastest time of any Bulldog in years in the varsity boys’ 400 meter dash with a time of 51.91 seconds. That time also guaranteed Nabeshima a spot in the finals.
Sprinter Paul Bromley tied his personal best in the 100 meters with an 11.40 and PRed in the 200 meters with a quick 23.02, punching his ticket to the finals in both events. In the Triple Jump, Bromley posted a huge personal record of 41 feet to take third and qualify for NCS in his first event.
Two other athletes made it to NCS on Tuesday. Kiara Rios took fourth overall in the girls high jump with a leap of 4 feet, 6 inches, and Kyle Fitzpatrick threw 41 feet, 5.5 inches in the boys shot put to narrowly qualify in sixth place.
Friday’s Varsity Finals saw the races and competition heat up even more.
D’Atri returned in the 1600 meter final to battle it out with the league’s best, including Miramonte’s Hannah Fishlow and Cassy Haskell. In the final stretch, D’Atri out-sprinted former Cross Country State Champion Chloe Hansel for fifth place in a personal record of 5:11.21.
The girls 800 meter final saw five athletes hit the automatic qualifying time standard of 2:20.18, including D’Atri, who finished in fifth place again with a time of 2:19.80.
In an unprecedented performance, Bromley qualified in an additional 3 individual events. Bromley sprinted a time of 11.39 seconds in the 100 meter final for fifth, and came back to run a lightning-fast wind-aided time of 22.52 seconds in the 200 meters for sixth place. In the Long Jump, he qualified for his fourth event with fifth-place leap of 19 feet, 4.25 inches. No other Bulldog in recent memory, or perhaps ever, has qualified for NCS in 4 individual events.
Rios added a second event to her NCS qualification list in the girls shot put, where she threw 30 feet, 7.5 inches for third place.
Fitzpatrick returned to throw 139 feet, 9 inches in the discus throw to take the only Bulldog win of the Championships.
The last NCS qualifier was Jackson Norried. In the high jump, Norried leaped 5 feet, 10 inches for second place overall.
Bromley, Fitzpatrick, Norried, D’Atri and Rios will represent the Bulldogs at the North Coast Section Tri-Valley Championships, which will be held at Foothill High School in Pleasanton this Saturday, May 21. The top seven finishers from there will qualify for the NCS Meet of Champions at UC Berkeley the following week.
