Emily Renna, a junior, qualified for the 2010 New York state indoor track and field championships at Cornell University with three personal bests en route to qualifying in the 55-meter hurdles and the triple jump -- she led her teammates to an exemplary day of competing.
Renna has been on a roll the last few weeks, establishing five personal bests in the hurdles and triple jump. On Saturday at RIT’s Gordon Field House, she won her preliminary round of the hurdles with a robust 8.69 seconds. In the next round, the semis, Renna defeated two of her nemeses with another personal best, 8.67. In the six-person finals, the fastest hurdlers in Section 5 this season, she ran another personal best, 8.54, finishing second to the top hurdler in Section 5, senior Allie Van Buren of Batavia, who ran 8:32. In the span of nine days, Renna lowered her personal best by an astounding .44-tenths-of-a-second.
“I was really tired after three hurdle races and a leg on the 4x200-meter relay, but I was excited to be doing so well,” Renna said.
Jumping with three jumps almost all at once because she had been hurdling, and no break there from the schedule nor from the officials, she recorded her second-best jump of all time, 34-9 3/4 to snag the second-place in the competition, securing her second individual event for the March 6 championships in Ithaca.
Renna’s teammates on the 4x200 relay were Julia Sanger, Janessa Mathews and Lauren
Star in the semis. They ran 1:52.09 winning their heat, one of their fastest times of the 2009-10 campaign.
“The trick with qualifying rounds is to conserve as much energy as you can while still advancing,” head coach Sean Van Laeken said. “That usually means running as slowly as possible while not giving away your position.”
In the finals, following the 4x400 relay finished third in 1:51.34, and that foursome included Sanger, Lauren Burke, Renna, Mathews.
Returning to earlier in the meet, the other individual qualifier was junior Burke in the 600
meters. Burke decided to hold back and “save something” for the two relays at the end of the day, the 4x400 and 4x200 relays. However, it was still the third-fastest 600m in school history, 1:38.39, and was good enough to qualify Burke despite some tense moments early in the race. Tara Murphy of Wilson unexpectedly decided to hurry the race along with a 60 second 400 meters.
“It really surprised me she went out that fast; it really forced everyone else in the race to change their race strategy I would guess,” said a smiling Burke minutes after the race.
As for the relays, sprint coach Rick Guido had this philosophy:
“The rounds-of-the-relays is a tricky proposition to say the least, a Russian Roulette gamble: cut the margin too closely — you lose and don’t advance. Play it straight up, let it all hang out — and you don’t have enough “gas in the tank” in the finals,” he said. “It happens a lot that a gamble doesn’t pay off and a good team is lost in the rounds — and that happened to a number of superb teams losing in the rounds in this meet, but that didn’t happen with our boys and girls.“
In the 4x400 relay semis, Michelle Barnum got the girls in good position, and they were in a position to do well with the other legs; Jane Rosenthal, an alternate in the rounds, ran 66.2 and kept the team in excellent position, even closing the gap that had opened up. Angie Zablotny, who has been running consistently well all season, ran a 63.2, and grabbed the lead for good, increased it so much that Mathews could follow her coaches’ instructions to “shut it down” early in the race. She did and the team won the heat, and advanced to the finals with the fifth-fastest time of the six teams in the finals.
Zablotny, as she did in the early rounds, took the lead again in the finals and opened it up considerably with a 63.3. Mathews, not pressed, ran 64.9 and increased the lead for Burke, who anchored with a 62.6 as she cruised to the finish line. The girls won the championship with a 4:14.16 to advance to the state championships.
The boys, not to be outdone, had planned their race strategy similarly to what the girls did but didn’t have the luxury of “replacements.” They would just have to cut the margins dangerously close. They did. It worked. They won their heat with a 3:40.22, the 5th fastest of the six-team final. However, in the finals, they would have their “A-game” on, and they ran the best they could — and have in years.
Leading off was Ian Steltmann followed by Peter Larmann. Cam Johnson ran the third leg in 53.2 and cut the Edison three-second lead some handing off to Justin Green, who ran 53.3.
“We said to the boys in our meeting after the rounds, we felt they could run either 3:31-high or 3:32-low, off their 3:34 they ran at sectionals,” Guido said. “They just had to execute their first 200 meters either faster or slower depending on what we felt they could handle. They did exactly what they had to do. It’s just unfortunate Edison’s speed is what it is — the fastest 4x400 meter relay we have seen around here in a while — 3:28.64. Fairport ran 3:32.24, a season-best time this year or in the recent past, too.
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