Titan Track Festival : Poway Sophomore’s Schedule Throws Her a Little Off Track

Christy Kurras, a sophomore at Poway High School, is used to competing in three or four events in a track meet. But the situation she encountered in her three events at Saturday’s Titan Track Festival at Poway High was distinctly different.

Within 2 1/2 hours of the meet’s start, events had fallen up to 40 minutes behind schedule. Kurras’ first event, the high jump (in which she entered the meet with a county best 5-feet 8-inches) was scheduled to begin at 1:30 p.m. but didn’t start until almost 3. That conflicted with the long jump, which also began at 3 and was on schedule.

Now, this is routine juggling for Kurras. But it became a destructive obstacle when she heard that she was running in the Division 9 1,600 relay, an event that began at 3:45.

In the high jump, defending state high jump champion Lynn Patrick of Serra, a junior, set a county best, jumping 5-8 to beat Kurras’ previous best, set Thursday. Patrick was pushed by Karen Armstrong, a surprising freshman from Torrey Pines, who cleared 5-6 for the second-best jump overall and had solid attempts at 5-8.

Kurras cleared her first attempt at 5-2 before she rushed over to the adjacent long jump pit to take her attempts. She fouled on her first jump, jumped 15-11 1/2 on her second and fouled on her third. Then she was off to the opposite side of the newly refinished racing oval for the start of the 1,600 relay, of which she was running the third leg.

Three quarters around on her leg, Kurras, fighting to hold the lead, looked sluggish and was passed. Poway finished second to Mt. Carmel, which had the day’s second-fastest overall time, 4:09.11 (to Esperanza’s 4:08.54).

By the time Kurras returned to the jump area she had left up to 20 minutes before, each competition had been concluded.

“After the mile relay, I wouldn’t have been able to jump anyway,” she said.

Her time allotment of 10 minutes had expired in both cases. One of her coaches said she would be upset her competition had ended. But she could take solace in the fact that her one legal long jump was the best among the competition of five divisions and that she won the Division 9 high jump on fewer misses.

There was competition in 10 divisions, although some were combined in certain events.

“I felt good about both of (the jumps) until I had to do the (1,600) relay,” she said.

While Kurras was doing her running around exclusively at Poway, a number of athletes, including Patrick, were putting in double duty--competing at Poway in the morning and early afternoon and then driving two hours to compete in a meet at Arcadia.

One of those was Morse 400-meter runner Michael Stevenson, the defending county champion who placed fifth in the state last year. Stevenson’s showing in the invitational 400 meters was arguably the best individual boys’ performance of the day. He beat his own county best by 1.8 seconds, gliding away from Jason Hamm of Mission Bay and Jerome Gross of Hoover for a time of 48.13 in the day’s fastest race.

He was complimentary of Poway’s new track, which was completed less than a month ago.

“This is a good track to run on,” he said. “You get good traction and don’t have to try too hard to run fast.”

Stevenson also competed in two relays, then headed to Arcadia, where he was also to compete in the 400 and two relays. He said he used the Poway meet as a confidence booster for Arcadia, a meet filled with potential state-meet competition.

“I wanted to prove to myself if I was prepared or not,” he said. “I feel pretty good now.”

Others who stood out at Poway were Crawford’s Shani Freeman, who ran a county best 58.28 in the girls’ 400; the Poway boys’ 400-meter relay team, which ran a 43.58; the Crawford girls’ 400-meter relay team, which ran a county leading 49.09; Poway’s Kim Dill, who ran a county best in the 100-meter low hurdles with a 15.0; and Stacy Thompson of Morse, whose triple jump of 38-7 3/4 also was a county best.