Looking to avenge his runner-up at the state championship in the men’s 110-meter hurdles last year, sophomore Anthony Taylor clinched the state title with a new personal best.
Taylor was among the four El Camino College qualifiers at the California Community College Athletic Association’s track and field state championship at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo on Saturday, May 18.
“Once I got off the last couple of hurdles, I knew I was going to separate from the pack,” Taylor said. “At the end, it was really just closing and finishing.”
Taylor clinched the state title in the 110-meter hurdles out of lane five, recording a 14.12, a personal record for the state champion who will be transferring to the University of California Irvine.
Assistant coach John Hall, who was coaching hurdles with Taylor during warm-ups, said the goal for the race was for Taylor to not only win, but to set a personal record. Taylor’s personal record heading into the event was 14.27 seconds, which was set at last season’s state meet.
Taylor returned to the track for the 400-meter hurdles, crossing the line at 53.47 seconds, placing 5th.
“You feel fortunate whenever you have an athlete that has an opportunity to win a state championship. It’s a difficult thing to do,” Hall said. “Coming back off of a second place from last year, the goal has always been to try to win a state championship this year. It’s a logical progression from second to first.”
Taylor Snaer from Modesto Junior College clocked in at 11.30 seconds in the sprint event, a qualifying standard for the U.S. Olympic trials which will take place at Hayward Field at the University of Oregon in June. Her season-best is 11.25.
El Camino’s sophomore sprinter Alexis Pitts took to the track in the women’s 100-meter dash, finishing in 8th place out of nine. Pitts recorded a 12.26-second result in her race.
To end the day, training partners and sophomores Ami Jacobson and Sequoia Gonzales ran the women’s 5,000-meter run. Gonzales and Jacobson led the race until Jacobson began to separate from the pack at the eight-minute mark.
Coming from the middle of the pack, freshman Rhiannon Walker and sophomore Julia Martinez of Clovis Community College began to close the gap toward the lead. Leading the race until 13 minutes and 26 seconds, Gonzales dropped to second after being taken over by the winner of the distance event in Marbella Flores of East Los Angeles College.
Flores clinched the state title at 17 minutes and 34 seconds. Gonzales took home a third-place finish, clocking in at 17 minutes and 38 seconds, while Jacobson crossed the finish line at 17 minutes and 53 seconds.
“I tried to stick with them [runners] the first two miles, stay with the pack, and then that third mile, and then break it down,” Flores said. “Throughout each lap, I kept thinking of reasons that motivated me: my family my friends, reasons why I started running. That got me through my race.”
Gonzales said the game plan for the 5,000-meter was to stick to 84-second splits while considering other runners in the race who ran on Friday night’s 10,000-meter run.
“It’s really going out there with the idea that everyone’s ran already, or the night before,” Gonzales said. “We have the idea that we’ll [Jacobson and Gonzales] exchange every two laps.”
During the women’s 200-meter dash, The Union caught up with Dean Lofgren, who will retire from coaching the ECC track and field program after 33 seasons. Lofgren will return for cross-country in the fall as his final season.
“For me, it’s time to let a new breed of coaches take the program,” Lofgren said. “It’s been a long, but very enjoyable career.”
