Fry, Exeter showcase talent at County Championships

In a meet stacked with schools from Visalia and Porterville, the Exeter Monarchs more than held their own.

Out of 20 schools, Exeter’s girls track and field team placed third at the Don Kavadas Tulare County Championships, while the boys finished sixth.

El Diamante won both titles (98 points on the boys’ side and 94.33 on the girls’) but amongst Orange Belt competition, the Monarchs were the runaway champion.

Exeter’s boys finished with 29 points but the girls came through with 67 at Jacob Rankin Stadium Friday night.

“El D and Tulare Union are really strong teams and it takes a lot of work to beat those teams. For us being a small school, we come out and we compete really well,” Exeter coach Darin Lasky said.

Leading the charge for the Monarchs was sophomore distance runner Katie Fry. The Central section’s No. 1-ranked 800-meter runner and No. 4 at the 1600 entered the meet with high expectations and she didn’t disappoint. 

Fry won the mile gold in 5:23.1 — 13 seconds ahead of teammate Shelby Sutton, who finished second. Three hours later, she took to the track for her signature race and eyed a meet-record time. Her personal record is 2:14, which is six seconds ahead of the meet-best 2:20.

But the wind had picked up considerably since the 1600 and all but sealed the record would remain.

“I know the record was a 2:20 and I was like ‘Oh yeah, I’m gonna break that,’” Fry said. “But these winds are really bad.”

El Diamante’s Molly Pahkamaa and Fry were within a yard of each other on the first lap, but Fry increased her lead at around the 600-meter mark and her kick was too much for the senior Miner.

Fry, who won the race in 2:23.23, said she doesn’t always wait until late to distance herself from the pack, but after surveying her opponents, she decided that was the best strategy.

“It depends on my competition,” she said. “If I have girls that I know are way faster than me, I like to draft off them for a while and then try to move up if I can. It’s fun to have really fast people in your race because they push the pace.”

She would also help the Monarchs’ 1600-meter relay team to a second-place finish (4:14.16).

Sutton would notch a win of her own later on in the 3200, as she, like her younger teammate, strided even with Mt. Whitney’s top seed, Gabby Zamora, for five laps. But she passed Zamora at the start of her sixth lap and opened up a 16-second gap by race end, finishing in 12:00.11 seconds.

Sutton’s personal-record race in cool and windy conditions tells Lasky that she could have an even bigger showing on the horizon.

“Shelby ran a great race. She looked really, really strong,” Lasky said. “She’s ready to crack a big one.”

Evan Dillon claimed Exeter’s fourth gold medal with a 5-foot leap in the high jump.

The Porterville schools didn’t have as good of night, as neither Porterville High or Granite Hills recorded a point on the boys side. Monache’s boys didn’t fare much better, tallying just four points. The Marauder girls did finish seventh with 26 points thanks in large part to senior hurdler Faiza Khalid.

Khalid was seeded third in the fast heat of the 100-meter hurdles, behind Dinuba’s Ayla Draper and El Diamante’s Ruth Hernandez. The three were even midway through the race but Khalid held form and surprised her counterparts with a late surge from lane seven, winning in 17.21.

The time was Khalid’s best despite the massive head-wind, something that her coach did not anticipate.

“That was a big surprise,” Monache coach Brian Cruess said. “I thought she was a good hurdler, obviously. I’m very confident in her but up to this point she hadn’t really beaten any of the better girls and those girls had beaten her at Lemoore.”

Draper went on to win the 300-meter hurdles while Khalid would also finish fourth.

The Orange Belt boys were highlighted by Exeter junior 400-meter runner Preston Smee, who finished second (50.87) to arguably the night’s top runner, John Walker (49.86), in the open 400.

“This is his first real race back of the year because he pulled his hamstring and he ran the fastest time he’s ever run,” Lasky said. “So it was a really good outing.”

The moral victory of the night went to Strathmore’s girls 1600-meter relay team, which won the relay’s slower heat in a back-and-forth duel with Farmersville. Farmersville third leg runner Alixa Trujillo blew past junior Spartan Denise Cabral entering the back stretch, but Cabral reeled in the exhausted Trujillo in time for the final exchange. 

Aztec anchor leg Yadira Salizar also surged ahead once taking the baton but ceded the lead to Andreia Postlewait, who got the Spartans a point with a sixth-place finish overall. 

Other notable performances:

Exeter’s Christian Gonzales finished third in the 800: 2:03.32

Granite Hills’ Victoria Almanza finished fourth in the shot put: 30 feet, 10 inches

Exeter’s Kathryn Hutcheson got third in the long jump: 15 feet, 6 inches

Monache’s Darlin Hornsby and Kristen Chan took fourth in the 1600- and 3200-meter runs: 5:51.47 and 12:56.79, respectively 

Porterville's Mia Anderson was fourth in the pole vault: 8 feet

Monache’s Michael Taylor got fourth in the 1600: 4:49.20

Monache’s Madison Lawley was fifth in the discus throw: 87 feet, 10 inches

Exeter’s Jerry Lopez was fifth in the 200: 24.64

Porterville freshman Savannah Ertl took fifth in the 400: 63.50

Exeter’s Cameron Loeffler was fifth in the 100: 12.06

Exeter’s Michael Callison got fifth in the long jump: 20’2.25

Porterville’s Alecia Gonzales took sixth in the 200: 29.51