#82 - Battle & Stark Are Diamond League Winners

Inside This Issue

• HS Highlights

• College/Pro Highlights

• Records 101: Mixed Races?

• Final Word

HS Highlights

• Emmry Ross traveled to New York City to once again show the nation’s best 800 runners that Michigan rocks. At Track Night NYC, she led from wire-to-wire to win in 2:02.30, the No. 2 time in state (and Ross) history.

• The Shepherd Bluejay Invitational once again produced amazing 3200 times. In the girls event, Natasza Dudek of Pioneer waited until 300 to go to sprint past West Ottawa’s Helen Sachs. Covering her final lap in 70.6, Dudek broke the 9th grade state record with her 10:03.23. Sachs finished in 10:09.19. Incidentally, Dudek’s 3K split of 9:29.4 also set a 9th grade state record.

• In the boys Bluejay 3200, Marshall senior Jack Bidwell also won with a big kick, dipping under 9:00 for the first time with his 8:57.90. Milford’s Kyle O’Rourke had tried to break away earlier but Bidwell stayed on him and went with 300 left. His last 200 took 30.1. O’Rourke clocked 9:02.16, Forest Hills Eastern’s Henry Dixon 9:03.84, and Divine Child’s Colin Murray 9:03.98.

• At the Warrior Invitational, Dow’s Victoria Garces showed she would have been a factor had she raced in Shepherd. Her 10:15.01 won by more than two minutes.

• The boys 4×8 list took a beating, with Clarkston blasting 7:44.58 at Davison, and Northville running 7:47.30 at Saline.

• McBain senior Benjamin Rodebaugh tied the state lead in the high jump with his 6-10 at a tri meet on Monday.

• Lawton’s Mason Mayne added a couple of inches to his state shot leader with a 61-3 at his conference.

• At the Ken Bell Invitational, Asher Paul of Traverse City Central cleared 15-3 to tie the state vault lead and take the win over East Kentwood’s defending state champ, Reece Emeott (15-0).

• Traverse City Central soph Lorelai Zielinski continued her stunning season with another sophomore state record in the discus, 156-4 in a dual meet on Tuesday. She threw 48-3 in the shot at the same meet.

• Romeo’s girls relays looked sharp at the MAC Red meet on Wednesday. Their 4×8 ran a state leader 9:16.69 (Violet Hrabovsky 2:18.8, Ella Goodsell 2:15.3, Emmerson Clor 2:26.5, Natalia Guaresimo 2:16.1). The Bulldogs also won the 4×2 (1:44.21) and 4×4 (4:00.35).

• Will Jaiden Smith dominated the highlight reel at the Farmington Invitational. The Belleville senior won a great 110 highs race in 13.63 (wind 1.3), with teammate Schmar Gamble at 13.86 and Michael Wilkerson of Adams destroying his PR with a 13.87. For Smith, that’s the No. 5 time in state history. Wilkerson is now =14 all-time. Then Smith came back in the 300s with a blazing 37.25. He capped the day with a sizzling 21.11 over 200, the wind a legal 1.7. Behind him was perhaps the deepest field in state history, the top 6 all under 21.75. Among those PRing were Jason Hamilton II of Troy (21.33), Devin James of West Bloomfield (21.35), and Samson Gash of Catholic Central (21.37).

• Other big moments at Farmington came from Belleville’s Jada Wilson, who ran a state leader 43.09 in the 300 hurdles in a hot match with Carrie VanNoy of Oak Park (PR 43.14). VanNoy had earlier won the 100 hurdles with a 14.02w.

• Samson Gash won a nice 100 race against Canton’s Quincy Isaac, 10.60-10.61, with Santino Cicarella at 10.62, wind-aided (2.7).

• Oak Park’s Rondre Austion went to the wire against Walled Lake Western’s Rodney Endsley in the 400, taking the win 48.02-48.05.

• Nevaeh Burns of Oak Park ran 55.12 in the 400 to top Kamryn Tatum’s 56.59.

• Garrod Alexander of Walled Lake Central won the shot with a PR 60-1.

• Some nice times came out of the PSL’s Blue Champs on Wednesday. MLK frosh Vernell Lee 10.74 in the 100; Jayla Dace of Renaisssance, 11.81; Caylin Ivy of Cass, 24.75; Laila Hawkins of Cass, 13.98. Renaissance relayed a state-leading 1:40.40 in the 4×2. Needless to say, this meet really should have had a wind gauge going. The weather folks say tail winds were trending at 9-10 mph, which is about double the legal limit.

• On Wednesday’s TVC Red meet at Alma, Sydney Kuhn of Swan Valley covered 300H in 42.06. Then she ran 200 in 24.63 and anchored the winning 4×4. The hurdle time puts her to No. 3 in state history, behind only Oak Park legends Nonah Waldron and Morgan Roundtree.

• Throwing at a tri-meet at Birch Run Wednesday, Montrose soph Addy Stiverson propelled the shot 51-9.5, the No. 2 throw in state history. It’s only 1.5 inches from the state record and just 7 inches short of the national sophomore record.

  

  Stiverson gets another state 10th grade record.

• Bad times happen, so don’t place complete faith in some of the lists out there. One of the state leading times on a-net as of this writing represents a significant jump for the athlete. The red flag is that the results show far too many times ending in zero, indicating that much/all of the meet was actually hand-timed, despite the a-net notation that it was FAT. Here’s the math: out of 290 total times that day, any given digit at the end of a time should show up around 10% of the time, given a random distribution. So 28 times or so each; a number that would of course vary in real life. At this meet, times ending in 1-9 show up 8-15 times each. Times ending in 0 showed up 183 times!

• TJ Hansen update: The Freeland senior, one of the nation’s best, has opted not to compete for his high school this spring. Instead he’s been focusing on training, with an eye toward peak performances at the HOKA Festival of Miles in St. Louis (6/5) and the Brooks PR meet in Seattle (6/8). This Sunday he will be racing a 1500 at Grand Valley.

College/Pro Highlights

• Local Girls Do Good In China: Anavia Battle and Grace Stark both won their events at the Shanghai Diamond League, battling some of the best in the world in races that will help determine world rankings. Battle won the 200 in 22.38 for her second straight Dl victory. Stark blasted a 12.42 in the 100 hurdles to take her first ever.

• Has Grant Fisher improved since high school? That’s the question. Grant Fisher has won Olympic medals and broken World Records, but as of yet, he still hasn’t beaten his high school mile PR from 10 years ago! That 3:59.38 has been a running joke for Fisher and his friends. Now he has the chance to send it into oblivion, as the Prefontaine Classic has announced that Fisher will racing in a loaded Bowerman Mile on July 5. Also in the field, Ann Arbor’s own Hobbs Kessler, who has broken his high school PR.

• Grand Slam Miami: Another slam, another $100,000 for Grant Fisher. He took 2nd by 0.04 in the 3000 in 8:17.60 (a time just a few seconds faster than the women’s winning time). Two days later, he broke away in the last mile of the 5000, his last four laps taking 3:57.57 for a 13:40.32 win.

• Freddie Crittenden did better in this Grand Slam than the last one. Here he ripped 13.09 for 3rd in the hurdles, his No. 5 time ever. Then in the 100 (his acknowledged weak spot), he ran a PR 10.68 for 7th.

• Anna Cockrell hurdled 53.84 in her 400H season opener in Baton Rouge. That puts her No. 6 on the world list this season.

• Cass Tech alum Tamaal Myers provided crucial points for UCLA as the Bruins swept their dual with rival USC, the first time they had done so since 2013. Myers won the 400H in a PR 50.46.

Records 101: Mixed Races?

By mixed races, we mean races with both boys and girls in them. It doesn’t happen at the collegiate level, but occasionally it pops up at the high school level. In fact, it’s a common thing in some conferences to speed up dual meets by combining the boys and girls 3200s. It’s pretty rare for it to happen in other events, but there has been at least one case this spring.

This is just a reminder that records can’t be set in a mixed race. Not state records, American records, World records, etc. However, school records are their own kind of crazy, and coaches can do whatever they want to, even if it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. (See Are Your School Records A Mess?)

The reason statisticians and record-keeping organizations frown on mixed races is because it is basically illegal pacing. The boys help the girl run faster than she would otherwise. It’s not much different than an athlete being paced by a coach or someone on a bicycle. In the same vein, oldsters may remember Dathan Ritzenhein being denied a state record in the 3200 because he ran it against 3200 relay teams. Doesn’t matter that he won; the rule holds. That’s why times from these races don’t go on our main list and usually aren’t accepted as qualifying times.

Some of you are going to point to road races as an exception to this. True, but that sport has evolved differently. When women were campaigning to run the Boston Marathon, they weren’t asking for a separate women’s heat later in the day. They wanted to be in the main event. And no marathon out there was going to run two different versions. Instead, they sometimes start the women earlier, and statisticians not only keep World Records for women but also another set for “women’s only” races.

Final Word

Last week I put in a plea for donations to keep this newsletter and nonprofit going. It got a response rate of zero. Nada. Zilch. I suspect a lot of our readers figure that so many people are donating that they don’t have to. The reality is that only about 2% have donated. In the meantime we are falling behind on our expenses. I had been determined to keep the newsletter free and not go with a subscription plan, but maybe that was unrealistic. So rethinking things here, as a lot of time goes into this, and it’s hard to convince loved ones that it’s worth losing money on. Decision will be made at the end of the season.

BTW, we may not have a newsletter next week. That finger surgery I mentioned last month was delayed, and Monday is the appointment with the scalpel. Not the most devastating surgery out there but it could make typing problematic.