Individuals shine at Mercer County track meet

Gengel sets PV mark; WW-P North trio is golden

By: Justin Feil
   HAMILTON — With the team titles out of reach, it was the individuals from area teams that delivered the championships and the highlights at the Mercer County Championships on Saturday.
   On the girls’ side it was Princeton High that claimed two individual victors, Natalie Gengel in the pole vault and Libby Bliss in the 800 meters, to lead them to a seventh-place finish. The boys’ side was paced by West Windsor-Plainsboro North’s senior trio of Joey Mastrangelo, Roland Bisio and Mike Page who helped the Knights finish fifth as a team.
   Gengel won the pole vault with a clearance of 11-feet, good for the Mercer County Championships meet record, the county record overall, the PHS school record and a personal best.
   "My goal for the meet was just 11-feet," said Gengel, a junior. "It wasn’t to win or anything. I cleared 10-6 last weekend. Last weekend was first weekend I tried that height. In dual meets, I was doing whatever to win."
   Now, she has a record and a starting point for sectionals that come in two weeks.
   "It’s nice having it, but I know I can do better," Gengel said of the record. "It’s kind of a hurdle out of the way."
   While Gengel was defending her title of a year ago, Bliss ran a blistering second lap of the 800 to track down the competition and claim the first county crown of her career.
   "It was great," said Bliss, a sophomore who was also thrilled to finish fourth in the 400 in a personal best. "I always wait the first lap and never take it out. But they took it out really hard and I wasn’t sure I could come back. But when I heard my teammates and coaches yelling around 500 meters to go then, I found something inside of me and sprinted and went for it. It felt good overall. It wasn’t my fastest time, but it felt like it."
   Mastrangelo also found the gears for times fast enough to win two gold medals. He won the 200 meters in 21.9 seconds and the 400 in 49.5. He was also fourth in the 100 meters to account for 24 of the Knights’ 45 points.
   "I was really confident in the 400," Mastrangelo said. "Even going into it, I thought I would take the 400 easily because I haven’t had a lot of competition this year. I hadn’t run against the kid from Trenton and (Jarrett) Pelzer from ND, but I didn’t think they’d give me as much competition.
   "I knew (Notre Dame’s Rich) Gunnell and Odeani (McBean of Hopewell Valley) would give me competition. I just raced Gunnell last week and barely beat him. It was head to head. And Odeani beat me. It was my last event. I had run the 400 and three 100s. I really didn’t think I could get him. I was happy I could pull it out in the end."
   The Knights, who beforehand talked about going after individual crowns, came away with two more when Bisio started his day by winning the 3,200 handily. His 9:50 equaled his school record and was seven seconds faster than the runner-up, Michael Batanian of Hopewell Valley.
   "I was going out in the race to keep it hard the whole time," said Bisio, who later survived being pushed off the track to finish sixth in the 800 meters. "I wanted to grind people the whole time. It worked out well. I was alone. I thought Joe (Ennis of West Windsor-Plainsboro South) would be with me, but it really opened up. I was looking back, which I shouldn’t have been, so maybe I would have got that extra second."
   Bisio instead tied his school record. He also holds the mile record, though Page came close to writing his own name in when he won in 4:30.9.
   "I wanted to have the lead at the end and to have it hold up," said Page, who was more than six seconds better than his previous personal best. "I just wanted to keep it.
   "Coach said at 1200 meters that he didn’t think I’d do a PR. I didn’t think I’d run a very fast race, but I ended up running a pretty big PR."
   Page led what ended up being the Packet area’s most successful event. West Windsor-Plainsboro South’s Chris Reale was second, just a half-second ahead of PHS’ Dan Cavallaro, who was just a tenth of a second ahead of fourth-place PHS teammate Christophe Dorsey.
   It was Reale’s teammates that turned in the Pirates’ finest performance in the biggest team event, the 4×400 relay. WW-P South’s team of Sifiso Takirumbudde, Matt Barbarasch, Stewart Adams and Ben Soltau broke the school record to win in 3:25.7. Takirumbudde also was fourth in the 110 and 400 hurdles. Ennis was fourth in the 3200 while Brian Leung was fifth. Adams was sixth in the long jump. And Soltau was fourth in the open 400, but made a champion of the Pirates by storming back in the final leg to topple front-runner Notre Dame and hold off Trenton High.
   "That was my thought the whole time, to catch him," said Soltau, who ran a personal best of 50.8 in the open 400. "Around the last 100, I was going to go by him. I thought I had him. I heard (Trenton) coming behind me. This is definitely what I wanted. We came in here looking to win the 4×400 today. Sifiso ran real strong. That was a big reason we won."
   The win pushed the Pirates to 35 points, good for eighth overall. It edged PHS, which was ninth with 32 points. Besides picking up big points in the 1600 from Cavallaro and Dorsey, the Little Tigers got a third-place finish from Louis Abramson in the 800 meters, a fourth from T.R. Johnson in the shot put and fourth from Ryan Trupin in the high jump and a courageous third from Tom McKinley in the pole vault.
   "He had not jumped in a week and a half," said PHS head coach John Woodside of McKinley, who suffered a dislocated shoulder in the Little Tigers’ next to last meet. "He had been working on physical therapy and he did some run-throughs on Friday and he didn’t think he could do it. He came out here and did some jumps and said, ‘I think I feel good enough to try it.’"
   Had McKinley not missed one attempt before clearing 12-feet, he would have been in the final jump-off for the individual crown. He’ll look to return to form at the sectional meet.
   The PHS girls are also looking to build on their county performances. The Little Tigers finished their meet by capturing sixth in the 4×400. They were staked to a lead after a strong opening leg by Elesha Casimir.
   "When I first got out, I felt really good," Casimir said. "I knew I had to kick it because I was out in the last lane and they had the stagger so they’d be coming up on me. I just fought. I didn’t feel good at the end. I couldn’t see anything. I didn’t want to come off the track with any regrets."
   The Little Tigers were the highest finishing Packet area girls team for the third straight year. Besides Bliss and Gengel’s wins, PHS got a strong showing in the javelin and Zoe Sarnak was third with a personal best throw 115-1 and Caroline Sholl was fifth.
   WW-P South was 11th with 12 points as Lauren Dolcetta was fourth in the long jump and Michelle Barbarasch was fourth in the 3200, Kelsey O’Conner was fifth in the 800 and the mile relay finished fifth as well.
   WW-P North followed closely on the strength of a fourth-place tie in the pole vault between Megan Cream and Christine Franz at 8-feet-6 while Julia Xu just missed being a third Knight to score in the event when she finished seventh. Jade Phame was fourth in the high jump.
   "Megan tied her personal best and Christine tied her best and Julie tied her best at 8-feet," said North girls’ coach Paul Glass. "Jade was fourth and Holland (Thomas) just missed a place in the intermediates also. We had a lot of personal bests. Unfortunately, we’re not strong enough for anyone to notice. But when you’re doing equal to or better than you have, and not placing, what are you going to do? We figured out we have the loudest team. So we have a lot of spirit."
   As opposed to their big, loud contingent, Stuart Country Day sent one competitor. Senior Emily Driscoll was fifth in the 3200 to help the Tartans edge Nottingham for 13th place in the team standings. The senior distance specialist ran 12:10.8.
   "I wanted her to finish up and she beat her school record," said Stuart head coach Tom Harrington. "She medaled. I told her we just wanted to put a little icing on her career. She’ll be my first runner to go to college to compete. She’ll go to Northeastern, and given a track for four years, she would have been able to do 11:15. You can do some stuff, but you need that speed. She never got a track until she showed up to meets. I’m so proud of what she’s done for the program."
   Driscoll was one of several seniors with big send-offs in their final county meet. It capped quite a day for individuals at the Mercer County Championships on Saturday.