Wednesday, Feb. 24, 2010

Crawford wins second straight pole vault title

Panther Creek senior pole vaulter Cassie Crawford headlined the local winners at Saturday's 4-A state indoor track and field championships.

It was her second straight indoor state championship. Crawford cleared 11 feet, six inches to win.

"I actually was hoping for 11-6, but I didn't know how it would go because my warm ups were so bad," Crawford said. "But then I went out and cleared on my first attempts from 10 feet to 11-6.

"That definitely calms you down, makes you so much more relaxed. You're not spending time thinking about what went wrong on the vault before."

The Cary girls 3,200-meter relay team broke their own state record set two years ago.

The top-seeded Imps knew they had it shortly after Deanna Foshee took the handoff to start the second leg of the race.

Initially, she just wanted to settle the race down a bit. There'd been three leaders in the first 800-meter leg.

The Imps' Sheridan Jordan showed the way early, then Southern Pines Pinecrest went to the front before Charlotte Myers Park took over the point just before the start of Foshee's leg.

"After my first lap, I just told myself that I'd try to stay with the girl from Myers Park because I knew her and I'd raced against her before," Deanna Foshee said.

"But then I felt her slowing down and I really started to go for it."

The Cary standout's push forward turned the race into a romp.

Deanna led by 15 meters after the end of her second lap around the track at the Eddie Smith Field House on the campus of UNC-Chapel Hill.

Teammates Jenna Christensen and Erin Foshee expanded on Deanna's work, allowing the Imps to shatter the previous state record of 9:51.5 set by Cary in 2008.

The quartet brought home the state championship in 9:30.9.

"The thing that makes this special is that we're all such good friends," Deanna said. "We drive each other, cheer each other on."

Three other locals brought home medals from the championships, led by Deanna Foshee's runner-up finish (3:06.72) in the 1,000. Bronze medals went to Bryan Spreitzer of Green Hope in the 3,200 (9:30.14) and Panther Creek's Janet Watson in the high jump (5-0).

The distance events -- as usual -- included a basketful of Tri-Nine entries.

Four league runners finished in the top-10 of both the boys and girls' 3,200 individual races. Apex's Kersie Jhabvala was fifth in the girls' race, ahead of Olivia Enright (Green Hope, sixth), Kasey Briggs (Athens Drive, seventh) and freshman Maura McDonnell (Green Hope, ninth). The Falcons also placed fifth in the 3,200 girls relay.

Right behind Spreitzer in the boys' 3,200 was Cary senior Mohamed Abushouk (9:34.16) and Green Hope's Ryan Walling (9:34.61). Apex's Bryan Noreen took eighth. Abushouk also grabbed fifth in the 1,600 meters.

Other area entries earning top-10 finishes in the state were Christensen (seventh in the girls' 1,000), Mary Theresa Montgomery of Apex (fourth in the girls' high jump), Audrey Diener of Apex (tied for ninth in the pole vault), Trey Geiger of Middle Creek (eighth in the 1,600), Cary's relay teams (eighth in the 4x800, 10th in the 4x400), Rashawn Winston of Middle Creek (seventh in the boys' high jump), John Mangum of Green Hope (seventh in the pole vault), Stephen Nappi of Apex (seventh in the triple jump) and Tavon Littles of Athens Drive (ninth in the triple jump).

The Imps, who posted a sixth place run in the 4x400, scored 23 points in the girls' meet, finishing ninth. Southeast Raleigh swept both team titles; Wakefield finished second in both divisions.