Carnes, Smith Lead Field at Simi Valley Invitational

Mike Carnes of Simi Valley and Madette Smith of Quartz Hill were the leading performers in an invitational track and field meet at Simi Valley High on Friday.

Each of the talented juniors won the long jump and 100 meters.

Carnes also ran the second leg on Simi Valley’s winning 440-yard relay (43.60).

Carnes appears to have completely recovered from the hamstring injury he suffered at the Arcadia Invitational three weeks ago.

In his first long jump competition since Arcadia, the Pasadena Games champion won with a wind-aided leap of 22-9.

He came back later in the day and defeated a good field in the 100 meters. His time was a wind-aided 11.02.

In the sprint, teammate Russell Haedt got off to one of his typical rocket starts with Carnes and junior Larry Miller of Palmdale following.

Haedt’s lead was short-lived however, as Carnes surged into the lead at the 50-meter mark and won going away.

Miller (11.14) finished second with Haedt fading to third (11.18).

Afterward, Carnes said that his right hamstring feels as strong as ever.

“The leg feels fine. It’s just a matter now of getting back into the competitive groove. I’m looking forward to the league meet next week,” he said.

Jamie Kogut, the Simi Valley field event coach, said that Carnes looked a little tentative in his long jump approach but he wasn’t worried.

“It’ll probably take him a meet or two until he’s 100% both physically and mentally. But that’s OK, the state meet is what counts.”

The Pioneers, who finished third at last year’s state meet, will need a healthy Carnes if they are to challenge for this year’s title at Cerritos College in early June.

Smith, who won four Southern Section 2-A titles last year, won the girls long jump with a wind-aided 20-10. The Quartz Hill athlete appeared to get stronger as the competition went along. Her winning jump came in the sixth round. She also had efforts of 20-5 and 19-10 in the previous two rounds.

Her domination of the event was so complete that her worst effort of 17-7 was a foot longer than the second-place effort of Palmdale’s Alexis Spann (16-6).

In the 100, she also won easily, sprinting to a wind-aided 11.92.

While Carnes and Smith were the only multiple winners in individual events at the meet, there were several other outstanding performances.

Steve Williams of Servite won the pole vault with a 15-0 effort.

He also had two good attempts at 15-9. He knocked the bar off with his hips on his second attempt and brushed it off with his chest on the third. He is tied for first on the Southern Section list at 16-0.

Jim Zimmer of Simi Valley anchored the Pioneer distance medley relay team (10:48.85) to victory with a 4:34.2 mile leg and later came back in the evening to win the invitational mile in an eased-up 4:29.27.

Teammate Neff McGhie ran a personal best of 4:30.08 to finish second.

In addition to his second place finish in the 100, Miller also won the triple jump in a wind-aided 46-10 1/2. Crespi freshman Russell White finished second at 44-7 1/2.

Other top individual performances were turned in by Jennifer Whelchel of Agoura in the shot put (40-7 1/2) and Spann in the triple jump (a wind-aided 35-6 3/4)

The top relay performance of the day was turned in by the Thousand Oaks girls in the shuttle-hurdle relay. The team of Christy Underhill, Kirsten Dally, Tracy Paulsen and Staci Leach won in a meet in school record time of 1:02.62.