Vista Murrieta Ranked No. 1 After Southwestern League Track and Field Finals

A couple of key Vista Murrieta boy’s athletes were nursing previous injuries, but the Broncos had enough in their tanks to get the job done at Thursday’s Southwestern League Track and Field Finals at Great Oak High School.

During the next four weekends, these athletes will have the opportunity to advance to one level and then the next. CIF-Southern Section Prelims are followed by CIF-Southern Section Finals at Cerritos College, May 21, CIF Masters also at Cerritos College, May 27, and the CIF State Meet at Buchanan High School in Clovis, June 3-4.

The Valley’s athletes rack up some impressive statistics—individually and as teams.

In 2010, Nike sponsored the first-ever Nike Track Nationals. Teams submitted top marks for their track and field athletes in various events. As the season progressed, the Broncos boys team was ranked first in the nation. Nike brought together many of the top teams to compete against one another last summer in Oregon. Vista Murrieta won the national championship.

This season, once again the Broncos are ranked No. 1. The Lady Broncos are ranked No. 12. In the published CIF-Southern Section rankings (May 4; dyestatcal.com), Vista Murrieta boys were ranked No.1  in Division 1 with Murrieta Valley ranked No. 4 and Great Oak No. 9.

The Great Oak girls squad is ranked No. 5 in the section as of this week.

At Thursday's meet, ach of the six schools had standout performances from both their boys and girls squads.

After all 16 events were tallied, the final team scores for the boys were: First place, Vista Murrieta with 236; second place, Great Oak with 139; third place, Murrieta Valley with 68; fourth place, Chaparral with 24; fifth place, Temecula Valley with 13; and sixth place, Murrieta Mesa with 8.

First place automatically qualifies for next Saturday’s CIF-Southern Section Prelims. Second and third place have to meet a basic qualifying standard.  After that, there are also at-large berths for student-athletes who finished lower than third place but still met the qualifying standard.

The Division 1 Prelims (all Southwestern League schools except Murrieta Mesa) will be hosted by Trabuco Hills High School in Mission Viejo. Murrieta Mesa qualifying athletes will compete in the Division 3 Prelims hosted by Estancia High School in Costa Mesa.

On the girl’s side, Great Oak head coach Doug Soles couldn’t have been happier.

“Our biggest step-up I would have to say has to be hurdles,” said Soles at the conclusion of the meet. “Martiesha Caines and Jade Miller, those two really stepped today and went 1-2 in the 100 hurdles and came back and went 1-4 in the 300 hurdles and that was a really big turning point for us.

 “And to see every single event on the track, our kids step up and go after it was huge,” Soles added. “I was totally psyched to see how many young kids we have step up today and it was a total team effort.  If you look at the points, we didn’t dominate in any one area. We were just good all around.”

When all was said and done, the final girls team scores were: First place, Great Oak with 165; second place, with 149.50; third place, with 87.50; fourth place, Temecula Valley with 38; fourth place, with 38; and sixth place, Chaparral with 16.

In their first varsity season of competition, the Murrieta Mesa Rams have seen some success in their young program.

Aaron Ballou, head track coach for the Rams shared his highlights for the day:

“Definitely the highlight on our girls side is the 4x100 meter relay,” Ballou said. "We thought we were running fast last year with freshmen and sophomores. We were running 50-point and then this year the last several weeks we’ve been able to drop down into the 48’s and we’ve done it two weeks in a row so we feel pretty good about going in to CIF Prelims next week.”

Referring to Thursday’s league finals successes, Ballou said, “We have a relay team that moved on, we have Craig Mauldin on the boys side in the triple jump.  He hit the at-large qualifying mark [with a jump of 44’-5”].  We had Starlynn Singleton who was in her second meet high jumping went 5’-0” and got second place.”

In addition, “Ashley Williams qualified in the 100 [third place; 12.48] and the 200 [third place; 25.40],” Ballou said.  “And then we had another freshman that got in there. [Bryttany Sones] was fourth in the 200 [26.13] and [fifth] in the 100 [12.83] and she’s just a freshman in her first year of organized track so she’s doing really well.”

Martin Dinsenbacher, longtime head track coach at Chaparral, shared a few thoughts on the day and on the season.

When quizzed about highlights for the day, the Puma coach said, “For the boys: Three school records (Zach Chimileski in the mile; Bennett Harris in the 800; 4x100 team).  For the girls: Chrissy LaPierre – great race in the 800. [third place; 2:20.66]; Tori Alemany school record in the 200 (fifth place; 26.16.)”

Gary Polhill is the head girls track and field coach at Temecula Valley. The Golden Bears have the second oldest program in the area, behind Elsinore High.

“The highlights [at this league finals meet] were the 400 that the girls won; [Taylor Lorack] ran a PR [58.08].  In the 800 the girls set a school record," Polhill said.

"Tammy Kim [2:19.47] won the 800—came from behind. And the 2-mile [3200 meters] which was the most exciting event of the day, Angela [Ziff; 10:45.75] came on and beat Erika [Reddish] right at the end.

“Erika is the defending league champion and has one of the top times in CIF in the [1600 meters],” Polhill said. “[Angela] just stayed with Erika. That was the strategy, stay with Erika and outsprint her. And that’s not an easy thing because Erika’s pretty fast.”

“And then the [1600-meter] relays, both [1600-meter] relays—the girls’ set a school record [second place; 3:58.80],” Polhill said. "Temecula Valley High School has been in existence 26 years.  And then the boys came within a half-second [third place; 3:27.46] of setting a school record.

“We had a lot of good individual performances. One surprise was Tammy Kim, breaking the school record and winning the 800.”

Dave Munn is head track and field coach at Murrieta Valley.

Highlights for the Nighthawks boys “were definitely in the jumps area,” Munn said.  “Triple jump, long jump, high jump, pole vault—yeah, we did very well.

“We took first and second in the boys high jump. We took first in the triple jump, we took second in the long jump and we took first in the pole vault, so we did very well.

“Our boys throws didn’t do too well but our girl's throws did very well. We took first and second in the disc. We took first in the shot put...same girl, Brandi Dunham [34’-8.0” and 112’-2”].  Our freshman girl [Michelle Campa] took first in shot and disc for frosh/soph division [27’-6” and 92’-4”], so she’s pretty excited about that.

“We tied second for girls vault and that was Annika Backlund [9’-4”] and Rachel Calhoun took fifth place [9’-4”]," Munn said.

Many athletes not moving on to CIF-Southern Section playoff competition still finished their season proud by hitting PRs (personal records). Shelby Wilkins, a senior pole vaulter at Murrieta Valley, was one of those after reaching the height of 8’-10”.  Shelby finished tied for ninth in the varsity competition and was smiling broadly, content with her PR achievement.

Munn was excited Shelby was able to end her season and her high school career on a good note.

Peter Chapman placed first in the boys pole vault.  At the Mt. SAC Relays several weeks ago, Peter set the school record with a vault of 15’-9” and was very close to beating the Riverside County mark of 16’-0” set recently by Elsinore vaulter Richard Leverson.

“He only jumped 14’-6” today but he is definitely going to move on,” Munn said. “I guess the wind kind of switched a little bit on him so it kind of threw off his game a little. He’s quite a competitor and as a junior he’s going to do well.”

Coley Candaele is the head track and field coach for the Vista Murrieta Broncos.

“The biggest highlight was that we made it through this meet healthy,” Candaele said. “With Jovonte [Slater] and Bernard Quinn being injured for the last month, it was touch and go whether they were going to be able to compete and they both made it through today safely to the next round and injury free. It gives them another ten days to get healthy for CIF Prelims.

“Everybody that needed to qualify, qualified. On the guys’ side we competed real well. On the girls’ side we competed well also and Great Oak just had a little bit better day than us.”

“Our kids competed very well as a whole group and we did what exactly what we needed to do so we’re coming around at the right time.”

For more information on results from this meet and upcoming CIF competition, click here, or here.