Sports

Hondo athletes in 300 hurdles, 4 x 200 relay at state meet

     Area state-bound athletes will get their turn in the spotlight Friday night, May 9, during the 3A division of the UIL State Track and Field Meet.
     The meet, held annually at Mike A. Myers Stadium on the University of Texas campus in Austin begins early in the day on Friday, but the running events for 3A and 4A, which will attract the biggest crowd of the day, will begin at 6 p.m.
     The 1A and 2A meet will be Saturday afternoon, May 10, with the 5A meet set for Saturday night.
     Hondo will have two entries in the meet for the second consecutive year, and for the second straight year, Kelsie Garvick will be competing in the 300-meter hurdles.
     In addition, she’ll be part of the Owls’ 800-meter (4 x 200) relay team at state, along with Stephanie Tapia, Kelley Poole and Laurel Honer.
     Garvick won the 300m hurdles in the Region IV-3A April 26 in Kingsville, while the 800m relay was the regional runner-up.
The relay team will run at 7:25 p.m. Friday, and even with a school record 1:45.49 at the regional meet, still has its work cut out, with the eighth fastest qualifying time among the eight teams participating. West Oso, the Region IV winner, has the seventh fastest time. Liberty-Eylau and Dallas Roosevelt have the fastest two times, both in the 1:41 range. Navasota, Giddings, Abilene Wylie and Canyon make up the remainder of the field in the 800m relay.
     Hondo has been assigned lane 7 in the heavily staggered relay event.
     In the 300-meter hurdles, Garvick’s region qualifying time of 46.12 is the seventh fastest among the field of eight, ahead of Region IV runner-up Aimee Gallegos of Medina Valley (46.33).
The fastest qualifying time in the field belongs to Katie Grimes of Canyon (43.70). The next three fastest times, all within a quarter-second of one another, belong to Miriam Amadu of Humble Kingwood Park (44.33), Lisa Maez of Dalhart (44.44) and Sheamber Isom of Atlanta (44.58).
     For the 8:05 p.m. event, Garvick has been assigned to lane 5, while Gallegos will be in lane 2, the innermost lane in use for the 300-meter hurdles.
     Two local runners will be competing in both the 800m and 1600m runs Friday evening. Michelle Jones will represent Medina Valley in both, while Cara Patterson will do likewise for Devine.
     In the 800, to be run at 6:20 p.m., Jones, at 2:18.95, turned in the second fastest qualifying time at regionals, behind Argyle’s Kristie Krueger, who ran a 2:17.97 in the Region I meet.       Patterson’s regional time of 2:19.33 is the fourth fastest, but all eight qualifying times in the two-lap race fall into a spread of 3.08 seconds.
     Later in the evening, around 8:45 p.m., Jones and Patterson will run in the 1600-meter run, where there is a much wider spread in the qualifying times. they have the sixth and eighth fastest qualifying times, respectively, at 5:22 and 5:25. Two runners, Kelsey Johnson of Iowa Park and Krueger, both qualified for state with blazing times of 4:55 and 4:57. Krueger is the 3A state meet record holder, set last year at 4:57.43.
Friday evening’s events will be run in the order, 3A girls, 4A girls, 3A boys, 4A boys.

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