By Bob Nuse, Sports Editor
The West Windsor-Plainsboro High South girls track and field team flashed its depth in winning the team title at the Mercer County Relays.
The Pirates picked up contributions from a number of different performers to win six events and outdistance Lawrence, 79-64, for the team title.
“We put it all together,” WW-P South coach Todd Smith said. “Some of our young girls really stepped up and performed well. Liz Petrov in the mile did a great job. Kelsey Kobus in the 4×8 and 4xmile has been great. We have a bunch of young kids that have really been performing well for us.”
The Pirates won the sprint medley, distance medley, 4×800, 4×1600, shuttle hurdles and the 3×400 hurdles relay.
“We haven’t had a chance to go to many invitational meets so this was our first big weekend meet,” Smith said. “We were so happy with the performance and with how they competed. We went in with some lofty goals. We wanted to break a couple meet records. We went in hoping to beat the 3×400 intermediate hurdles record but Kathryn (Schoenauer) took fall over eighth hurdle. She got up and finished and took eighth overall and we were still able to win the event even though she fell. That was how well she was running.”
The Pirates broke the meet record in the sprint medley relay with Bernadette Co, Edwina Gulama, Christina Rancan and Schoenauer finishing in 4:05.53. The Pirates also won the shuttle hurdles (Kelsey Kobus, Vivian Lao, Cao and Schoenauer), the 4×1600 (Kavya Tummalapalli, Petrov, Haley Rich and Kobus), the 4×800 (Serena Chang, Mita Elan, Rich and Kobus), and the distance medley (Rancan, Tia Saade, Tummalapalli and Petrov).
“It was a good meet for us,” Smith said. “We had the usual suspects do well but also had some other girls step up. Kelsey Kobus is doing a great job. Brianna Hodges is a sophomore and could be our fastest 600-meter runner. She keeps getting better and better. Seriah Barnes coming into her own and into the low 60s and could be sub 60s in the 400 by end of the year. That would give us six girls that could go sub 60s.”
The Princeton girls won the 4×400 relay with Maia Hauschild, Jackie Patterson, Jordan Vine and Amy Watsky.
On the boys side, WW-P North won the 3×400 behind the efforts of John Owens, CJ Markisz and Myles Williamson. The Knights also won the 4×200 (Miles Fye-Moore, Kacper Rzempoluch, Owens and Markisz), the pole vault relay (Rzempoluch and Kent DePasquale) and the long jump relay (Owens and Revanth Gumpu).
Princeton won the 4×1600 relay with Alex Roth, Will Hare, Jeremy Taylor and Cy Watsky).
WW-P North finished third as a team. WW-P South was fifth and Princeton finished eighth.