San Diego High School Track : Rowe Recovers From Fumble to Win 100 and 200 Meters

It was ironic that Lincoln High School’s Patrick Rowe would drop the baton pass on the final leg of the 400-meter relay Friday in the city leagues’ track and field championships at University City High School.

Rowe, an All-American receiver in football, fumbled the handoff from Charles Patterson, and the Lincoln team, the county’s second-fastest, wasn’t able to qualify for the forthcoming San Diego Section preliminaries. The Crawford 400-meter relay team, the county’s fastest by 7/100ths of a second, finished first in 42 seconds to win the City Central League championship.

However, Rowe came back as one of 13 athletes to win two events as individual championships were decided Friday in the City Central, City Eastern and City Western Leagues.

Rowe, visibly disappointed after the relay mishap, came back to win the 100- and 200-meter dashes in thrilling races against Crawford High’s Raymond Ethridge.

Rowe outleaned Ethridge at the tape to win the 100 in 10.4 seconds. In the 200, Rowe fell behind coming out of the blocks, but caught Ethridge on the turn and passed him with 50 yards to go to finish 1/10th of a second ahead at 21.5.

Lincoln’s Michelle Outlaw, participating in her first competition in three weeks, won the 100-meter hurdles in 15.0, the long jump in 16 feet 2 inches and finished second in the 300 hurdles in 46.8 to teammate Veronica Powell (46.4). She said her left knee, which had been operated on in December, was still bothering her.

Other double winners included Crawford’s Onnie Ferguson (12.2 in the 100, 26.1 in the 200), University City’s Stephanie Williams (14.7 in the 100 hurdles, 46.4 in the 300 hurdles), La Jolla’s Sean Edwards (15.6 in the 110 hurdles, 40.1 in the 300 hurdles), Morse’s Kim Matthews (12.2 in the 100 and 24.7 in the 200) and USDHS’s Kristi Bache (2:22.2 in the 800 and 5:29 in the 1,600).

Athletes in the 3,000, pole vault, discus throw and triple jump qualified for next Saturday’s preliminaries earlier this week.

The top three finishers in each event qualified for the section preliminaries, which will be held at Mt. Carmel High School.