The Sun Angel Classic Preliminaries were held Thursday at Sun Angel Stadium, with the Field events as well as the 300 Hurdles and 3200 meter runs finalized that same day.
Field events started with the Boys Discus Throwers launching the platter at 10:00 am. Desert Ridge's Dante Blissit emerged from the ranks to swing the Discus over a distance of 182' 1" and thus impose a new Meet Record. With this performance, Blissit also unearthed a new lifetime best by over 12 feet.
Jae'Nisa crushed the Prelim 100 Hurdles with a Meet Record of 14.13, Thursday afternoon at the Sun Angel Classic and then returned to the Low Hurdles later that afternoon, to run the only time under 45 seconds. Meanwhile, Trey Johnson (Tolleson) ran 13.70 in his heat to demolish the old meet record of 14.25.
In the Boys 1600 Tristan Stellmach ran away with the win out of Heat 1 in a time of 4:28 that would stand as the fastest of the Prelims. The Girls 1600 Prelims were dominated by Jacque Pinon from St. Pius X out of Albuquerque, New Mexico and Meghan Barney (Veritas Prep) who ran 5:13 and 5:14, respectively in Heat 3.
In the Final Heat of the Girls 400 meter Preliminaries, Alena Ellsworth (Highland) ripped 55.10 for a new Meet Record and Lifetime best since her freshman year.
The top 5 times came out of the 9th and final Heat of the Boys Intermediate Hurdles, with Brandon McGuire (Raymond S. Kellis) flying across the track to set a Meet Record and School Record of 37.04 seconds.
Later that night the Boys 3200 final, Desert Vista's Chris D'Angelo led the field over the first half of the race. With two laps to go Jacob Lewis (Boulder Creek) took control, and though D'Angelo stayed on his shoulder, Lewis held through for the win in 9:37 with Chris in tow less than a second behind. After winning her Heat of the 1600 meters Chaparral's Rachel Turner returned to lead and win the Girls 3200 final with a time of 11:29.
In Heat 3 of the Boys 4x400 Prelim, it came down wire-to-wire between the Desert Vista Thunder and the Highland Hawks, with Desert Vista's Gabe Deutsch bringing it home in 3:23.24.
As we head into the rest of the Track finals, we can expect those returning to uncover some deeper performances on Saturday when the venue will gather prep stars and Olympians alike.