Welcome to Championship Season!
Hello nighthawk families and fans,
Yesterday we had our Palomar League Finals meet at Mt Carmel High School. Our Nighthawks took home 25 medals, 10 of those being individual league champions and set 3 meet records! Find the full meet results here, an album of photos from the meet by Nick Echsner here and keep reading for some highlights.
Pictured, Junior Peter Akinpelu, Photo by Nick Echsner
Athletes of the Meet
We want to take the time to highlight a couple of athletes who had spectacular performances at our last meet.
Throws -
Sreeja Rai (10) - broke through some barriers she had been at for a while, finally cleared 80’ in discus!
Taylor Ellis (11) - broke through some barriers she had been at for a while, finally cleared 30’ in shot put!
Sprints -
Bianca Calafato (12) - set new personal bests in both the 400 and 200, qualifying for CIF Prelims in both as well as helping our team qualify in the 4x400.
Jumps
Danny Tragarz (12) - took first place in long jump with a new personal best of 21’1.75”
Aadit Gupta (11) - set a huge new personal best in triple jump finishing 4th place with a jump of 40’10.75”
Abbi Lorett (11) - also set a huge PR in triple jump, nearly a foot over her previous best with a mark of 30’8.5”
Hurdles -
Josh Spurgiesz (11) continues to impress. Finished 2nd in the 300 hurdles, running a time of 39.68. This is almost 1.5 seconds faster than his previous best and good for 3rd All-Time in school history!
Dean Phillips (11) continues to make great improvements in both hurdles setting new personal bests in both events.
Distance -
Paige Echsner (10) had an outstanding performance in the 800 running 2:12 which is a 2 second PR and also a CIF state auto-qualifying time.
Peter Akinpelu (11) came up big with a huge lifetime best of 1:59 in the 800. This is his first time breaking the 2:00 barrier and will be moving onto CIF Finals next week
Pole Vault -
Paige Echsner (10) - placed first in vault with a jump-off clearance against Poway, finishing 12’9.
Caitlin Khieu (9) - double PR’d at 11’3, tying out freshmen girls school record.
Congratulations to all of those athletes on a great meet. We would like to take the time to recognize those athletes whose performance landed them onto our top 10 all-time lists.
Danny Tragarz (12) - Boys Long Jump: 2nd All-Time with a jump of 21’ 1.75”
Josh Spurgiesz (11) - Boys 300 Hurdles: 3rd All-Time with a time of 39.68
Ella Echsner (11) - Girls 300 Hurdles: 3rd All-Time with a time of 46.35
Aadit Gupta (11) - Boys Triple Jump: 4th All-Time with a jump of 40’ 10.75”
Addison Shannon (9) - Girls Mile: 5th All-Time with a time of 5:13.41
Caitlin Khieu (9) - Girls Pole Vault: 6th All-Time with a vault of 11"‘ 3”
Ben Sheffres (11) - Boys 100: 8th All-Time with a time of 11.38
Savana Jones (12) - Girls 100: 9th All-Time with a time of 13.04
Kaylee Tan (12) - Girls Long Jump: 9th All-Time with a jump of 15’ 11”
Carsen Mckinney (11) - Girls Shot Put: 9th All-Time with a throw of 32’ 8.5”
Each of these athletes have made a great impact on our program, making themselves known as some of the best in their event since our school opened in 2009. We look forward to witnessing their continued success as the season goes on.
We also had 3 meet records set by our Nighthawks.
This is the first year the 4x800 has been added to League Finals and both our boys and girls teams finished first. Each setting the first meet record in the event.
Stanley Yan, Kielan Rigg, Peter Akinpelu and Ben Owsley - Boys 4x800: finished in a time 8:34.84
Brianna Busse, Addison Shannon, Paige Echsner and Hannah Riggins - Girls 4x800: finished in a time of 9:55.90
Hannah Riggins - Girls 1600: finished in a time of 4:49.69 shaving over 4 seconds off of the previous record which stood for 31 years.
Our Next Meet
Those athletes who qualified through from League Finals will compete this coming Saturday at CIF Prelims which will take place at our home track!
We will have the final lists of who is competing at practice this week. All athletes who competed at League should be at practice on Monday to find out if they qualified. Those who did not will need to turn in their washed uniform at the beginning of practice on Monday or Tuesday.
House Keeping
Thank you to the parents who already signed up to help out at the snack bar this season. We still need volunteers for our CIF Prelims snack bar, If you are available for that or any of our upcoming home meets please fill out this form to let us know your availability! We really appreciate your help.
We also need student volunteers to help out at the meet. If you or your friends are available, please sign up through this form to help out! We are happy to sign off on volunteer hours as needed.
Donate your used spikes to a Nighthawk in need!
If your athlete has spikes from last season that aren’t super torn up, they can use them again. If they are getting new spikes and don’t need their old ones, feel free to bring them to practice and we can share them with another nighthawk in need! Once your athlete gets their spikes, have them show their coach before wearing them at practice. We can help navigate each athletes needs.