Pirates Track and Field Show Well at WSC Preliminaries
The Ventura College Men's and Women's track teams traveled to College of the Canyons for the Western State Conference championship preliminaries. This is the first step for track and field athletes as they strive to reach the state championships next month. The majority of the events contested were qualifiers for next week's WSC finals, but five events were contested as the events finals. The long jump, high jump, shot put, javelin and 10k for mens' and women's served as finals advancing the top six in each event to the Southern California Regionals May 7th at Antelope Valley College.
The Ventura College Men's and Women's track teams traveled to College of the Canyons for the Western State Conference championship preliminaries. This is the first step for track and field athletes as they strive to reach the state championships next month. The majority of the events contested were qualifiers for next week's WSC finals, but five events were contested as the events finals. The long jump, high jump, shot put, javelin and 10k for mens' and women's served as finals advancing the top six in each event to the Southern California Regionals May 7th at Antelope Valley College.
Several Pirate athletes qualified amongst the final events: Alyssa Carrillo (fifth in shot put), Justin Coert (sixth in shot put), Sedona Williams (sixth in high jump), Danielle Colvin (fifth in long jump), and Dejahnae Brown (second in high jump). Holding possible "At-Large" spots to Regionals are Justin Coert (seventh in javelin), Sedona Williams (seventh in long jump), and Aiyana Brown (seventh in high jump).
On the men's side Glendale College held a narrow one point lead over Cuesta College after the first day 33 to 32, while Canyons rounded out the top three with 25 points (the Pirate men scored 5 points good for eighth place). On the women's side, Canyons (76), Weat LA (31), and Ventura (23) hold onto the top three team positions.
The top nine finishers in each sprint, hurdle, 800 meters and 12 in the 1500 meters advanced to the WSC Finals. Athletes moving on included Tiara Litonjua (100m hurdles), Gabriella Ramirez (100m and 400 meter hurdles), Brittany Cox (400 meter hurdles), Maria Villalobos (1500 meters), Kenna Perez (1500 meters), Sam Boyle (1500 meters), Colvin (400 meters), and Alisha Greenlaw (100 and 200 meters).
Tristan Griffith won his heat of the 400 meters in a lifetime best 48.01 (fifth best in SoCal), as well as his heat in the 200 meters. Tiara Litonjua won her heat of the 400 meter hurdles nearly besting her previous best by two seconds (also ranking fifth in SoCal). Women's 100 meter hurdle school record-holder, Alisha Greenlaw won her specialty to lead all hurdle qualifiers.
A notable non qualifier came in the form of freshman David Torres running his first track 10k. "DJ" as he's known produced the 23rd fastest time in the south as well as the 10th fastest in school history.
The Pirates will travel 27 athletes competing in 20 events for next weeks finals. "The ebb and flow of a championship environment requires a team to weather not scoring in a marquee event while grabbing unforeseen points somewhere else" commented head coach Tony Veney. "We had a couple events like that today and the athletes rallied to keep us in the hunt for next week's finals." The WSC Finals will be held on Friday Apr. 30 at Bakersfield College with field events to start at 1:00 pm with the first track event beginning at 3:00 pm.