State Track Championships : Hawthorne Wins Boys’ Title; Bridgewater Beats Watts in 200

The winner, and still champion . . .

Bryan Bridgewater

And Hawthorne.

And Angela Burnham.

So it went Saturday evening at the California Interscholastic Federation/Reebok track championships before a crowd of 10,206 at Cerritos College. Hawthorne won the boys’ title for the second year in a row and fifth in the last six, Bridgewater defeated rival and friend Quincy Watts in the much-awaited 200-meter final, and Burnham continued her domination in the girls’ sprints.

Hawthorne, which came within a point of becoming the first school to win both team championships since Berkeley did it in 1980, scored 34 points in boys’ competition as Curtis Conway took second in the 100 and third in the 200, Travis Hannah won the 400 and the 1,600 relay team was victorious.

Washington of Los Angeles--with Bridgewater winning the 200, taking fifth in the 100 and bringing the Generals from fifth to third in the 400 relay--was second at 24, and Edison of Huntington Beach and Oakland tied for third with 22.

For a change, however, Hawthorne was something of a surprise.

“We knocked down a lot of barriers for this win,” Coach Kye Courtney said. “Everyone said Washington was supposed to win or that Independence (from San Jose) was supposed to win. Then Oakland was good, and it looked like they would win. We started the year as the team to beat, but by the time the meet got here, we were barely in the write-ups.

“We looked at it all along like, if you want this title, you’ll have to go through us.”

No one could, not even Bridgewater, who was very impressive in the 200 and on his leg in the relay but faltered with a fifth-place finish in the 100, mainly because of a poor start. Still, he proved last week’s win over Watts of Woodland Hills Taft in the City 200 final was no fluke, taking another approach this time.

The race belonged to Watts, the two-time defending state champion, from the start. But Bridgewater, who took the lead and never relinquished it when the two met nine days ago, ran Watts down with about 90 meters to go. Bridgewater’s time was a wind-aided 21 seconds. Watts finished in 21.02. With a big start or a big finish, there’s no doubt who No. 1 is in the state--in the country, too--in the 200.

“It feels the same,” Bridgewater said, comparing the two races.

He wins a state title, and it feels the same?

“Well, I get my name in the record book. That feels pretty good.”

Watts, who won three state titles in his first two years in high school but none as a senior, said he was bothered again by the hamstring injury that sidelined him for much of the year. Not that he was making excuses, of course.

“I felt it about the last 50,” he said. “I was kind of favoring it a bit.”

Bakersfield and Rio Mesa of Oxnard tied for the girls’ title with 28 points, the first time that has happened since that division began in 1974. Hawthorne was next with 27, and Muir of Pasadena and Santa Teresa of San Jose tied for fourth at 22.

Bakersfield got its 28 points on the strength of its strength--Dawn Dumble won the shotput and took second in the discus and Melissa Weis won the discus.

Rio Mesa’s success was just as cut and dried. The Spartans relied mostly on Burnham, a junior who won the 100 title as a freshman. This time, she merely won the 100 in 11.52 and the 200 in 23.45, the No. 2 time in the nation for 1988 in both events. She also anchored the 400 relay team to fourth place. The other points came from Mary Bittner’s fourth-place finish in the long jump.

“I was nervous for the 200,” said Burnham, who lost to Simone Cain of Hueneme last week in the Masters meet. “Most of the time, I’ll get in the blocks, take a deep breath and go. But the gun went off and I was still nervous.”

Time-wise, the top individual event turned out to be the girls’ 3,200, in which winner Karen Hecox of West Covina South Hills (10:16.14), Reyna Cervantes of Montebello (10:18.80), Katy McCandless of Palos Alto Castilleja (10:25.14) and Kira Jorgensen of Rancho Buena Vista (10:25.55) in the San Diego Section established the year’s top four times in the nation in the event.

Jorgensen also moved up to No. 2 in the 1,600 by winning in 4:49.54.

Not all events were decided Saturday, which may or may not have been the plan, depending on who you talked to. All field events except the pole vault and high jump used a carry-over system in which a competitor could win the title during qualifying Friday if no one bettered it.

The meet organizers’ decision to go with that format, rarely used anywhere and, according to veterans in attendance, never in California, at least in the past 20 years, was strange. No mention of the switch was made in pre-meet information sent to athletes and coaches, but officials said they explained the change Friday.

Apparently, however, they didn’t do a very good job of it.

“I don’t think a lot of people knew what was going on,” said Fallbrook’s Brent Noon, who finished third in the shotput to a mark of 64-0 1/2 that Kaleaph Carter of Huntington Beach Edison hit Friday. “At first, they didn’t even say they were going to carry over. I was aware of it, but just a few minutes before it (the event) started.”

Prep Notes

Dawn Dumble of Bakersfield won the shotput with a best of 48-2 1/2, tying her own mark for No. 2 in the nation this year. . . . Reggie Williams from River City of West Sacramento won the 1,600 in 4:08.78, the second-best time in the country for 1988. He also took the 3,200, joining Michelle DeCoux of Oakland Bishop O’Dowd and Angela Burnham as the only double winners. DeCoux’s 42.16 in the 300 low hurdles is No. 1 for the year. . . . Nicole Smith from Montclair Prep of Van Nuys, who finished second in the girls’ long jump, is the daughter of former baseball star Reggie Smith.

Hawthorne won the boys’ 1,600-relay title for the sixth straight year with two sophomores, Chris Alexander and Ishmael Del Pino, a junior, Curtis Conway and only one senior, Travis Hannah. The girls took the 400 relay for the fifth time in the last six years. . . . Independence of San Jose, the pre-meet favorite for the boys’ title, finished 11th, with 11 points. Locke of Los Angeles, the favorite in the girls’ field, tied for eighth, with 14 points.

Although this was the final high school meet of the year, the action is really only beginning for most of the top stars. From here, many will compete in the Golden West Invitational next Saturday at Sacramento; the Keebler Invitational the week after at Elmhurst, Ill.; the Junior National meet June 24-25 at Tallahassee, Fla.; and, finally, the Olympic trials beginning in mid-July in Indianapolis.