Ristananna Tracey got her share of the headlines with her big run in the 800m at last weekend’s UTech Classic. The Edwin Allen senior set a personal best of 2 minutes 03.97 seconds. That was the punctuation mark on a fine Edwin Allen team performance, one with implications for the Penn Relays record book.
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Carla Thompson (2:13.38), right, and Desreen Montague (2:09.01) off her shoulder.
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At the 1991 Penn Relays, Vere Technical High School set a world junior record in the 4x800m, 8 minutes 37.71. Charmaine Howell, Claudine Williams, Janice Turner and Inez Turner turned in split times of 2:11.3, 2:11.1, 2:12.1 and 2:03.2, respectively to etch their names in Penn history. The UTech Classic results indicate that Edwin Allen has a chance to do what Vere did 20 years ago.
Tracey aside, Edwin Allen will head for Franklin Field with a great squad. Class 2 1500m champion Marleena Eubanks ran a personal best of 2:08.77 seconds at the Classic ahead of the Class 1 winner Desreen Montague. Sanikee Gardner, anchor of Edwin Allen’s medley team at Girls Champs, and Carla Thompson logged times of 2:13.38 and 2:14.10, respectively.
Montague, who ran 2:09.01 at Champs in Class 1, turned in a time of 2:11.58 at the Classic. That means that Edwin Allen has three – Tracey, Eubanks and Montague – with times at 2:09 or better and two others in the 2:14 range.
To make things better for the Frankfield school, Camira Haughton ran 2:14.99 in the same Classic race. That should allow Edwin Allen to qualify comfortably at Penn while saving Tracey for big efforts in the 4x400 and the 4x800 final.
Vere's Record in Danger
Holmwood won the Penn 4x800 last year and have three members from that quartet in Chris-Ann Gordon, Monique Thompson and Petrine Plummer. Add Shanese Young, anchor of Holmwood’s record breaking Girls Championships medley team, and the defending champion team becomes formidable.
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Edwin Allen's Desreen Montague (right) on her way
to victory in the 1500m at Champs 2011 in Kingston.
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With Tracey resting, Holmwood won the event at the 2011 Gibson Relays.
Still, the numbers stack up in favor of the Michael Dyke-coached Edwin Allen team. The sum of the Edwin Allen personal bests is just under 8 minutes 36 seconds. That puts Vere’s record in danger and makes the Championship of America 4x800 an event not to be missed at the 2011 Penn Relays.
(HUBERT LAWRENCE, author of the Champs 100 book, has covered local and international athletics since 1987.)