HHS track athletes ready for January

Crawford, Kloss lead team into State Group 4 Relays

By: Rudy Brandl
   
   Running five meets in nine days over the holidays should provide ample preparation for the Hillsborough High track athletes entering an important stretch of January meets.
   While the busy meet schedule was somewhat exhausting for veteran head coach Rich Refi, it gave him plenty of opportunities to evaluate his talent heading into the next two weekends. While Super Bowl Sunday isn’t until Jan. 26, the Raiders will have two Super Sundays coming up Jan. 12 and Jan. 19.
   "I haven’t even had a chance to breathe," said Refi, whose team competed in four holiday meets at Drew University between Dec. 21-28 and then in the inaugural Somerset County Relays at Lehigh University on Dec. 30. "It’s been so overwhelming."
   Still, Refi hasn’t completed his lineups for Sunday’s State Group 4 Relay Championships at Princeton University’s Jadwin Gym or the State Group 4 Championships, an individual meet set for the following Sunday at the same site.
   "There’s still a few things to figure out," he said.
   Athletes will be permitted to compete in four events for the first time this year. That should help the Raiders, especially on the girls’ side where versatile standouts Erin Crawford and Lauren Kloss will be able to cover more events.
   Hillsborough prides itself on hard work and rigorous training and conditioning, so that one extra event shouldn’t be a problem.
   "There’s enough time where it’s not really a factor," Refi said. "I’m not scared to do it. That’s how we train."
   Crawford and Kloss weren’t the only HHS athletes who made holiday headlines. The list is almost endless, which shows how deep this program’s talent pool has become.
   As usual, several school records were established during this cluster of meets. Senior Hector Tirado was part of two shot put records, setting an individual record (51-2) at the DeSchriver Invitational and joining Matt Bruce in setting the shot put relay mark (97-0½) at the Holiday Relays.
   Other individual marks were set by Crawford in the 600 (1:37.18) at the Passarelli Invitational, Jenizah Melendez in the shot put (36-5½) at the DeSchriver Invitational and Franklin Andreyko in the long jump (23-7¾) and Nick Confuorto in the pole vault (13-0) at last Saturday’s PSAL Invitational at The Armory in New York City.
   The girls’ high jump relay team of Marissa Van Cleef and Nicole Humphrey set a record with a combined 9-6 at the county relays, while the boys’ shuttle hurdles unit of Tony Flores, Andreyko, Jim Morley and Mike Barberio sizzled to a record 31.29 time at the Passarelli meet.
   Hillsborough figures to be most competitive in the shuttle hurdles this weekend. Only the Trenton boys and Jackson girls have posted faster times so far this winter.
   "It’s hard to say because there are so many good teams," Refi said. "There’s so many teams that are close. A lot of teams are within a second. It depends who has the best day."
   The Raider girls also made state relay performance lists in the 4×800 and sprint medley, while the boys are mentioned in the distance medley. Most of those performances came at the Holiday Relays, the meet Refi considered the team’s best of the series. Kloss and Crawford each won four golds that day.
   Other highlights and boys’ team leaders from the Drew meets include Andreyko in the 55 dash (6.89), Flores in the 300 (37.95) and 55 hurdles (7.93), Barberio in the 600 (1:28.64), Mike Klueber in the 1,000 (2:45.90), 1,600 (4:36.30) and 3,200 (9:58.87), Bryan Fox in the high jump (6-2) and Tirado in the shot put.
   Crawford set girls’ standards in the 600, 1,000 (3:09.48) and 55 hurdles (8.84), while Kloss ranked second in the 600 and hurdles and first in the 300 (44.17). Other girls’ leaders were Yaneisha Warrick in the 55 dash (8.09), Ashley Uniszkiewicz in the 1,600 (5:30.39) and 3,200 (12:03.40), Marissa Van Cleef, Kloss and Nicole Humphrey in the high jump (4-10) and Melendez in the shot put.
   "I thought we did very well considering how many meets we had in a short amount of time," Refi said. "I wasn’t really worried about places. I’m more concerned about how we get ready for the rest of the season."