High School Roundup : Castle Park Sprinter Moody Narrowly Wins First Big Showdown in 100

After running a hand-timed 10.7 100 meters on a dirt track on Thursday at Southwest High, Castle Park’s Kiyoshi Moody was looking forward to his first sprint on an all-weather surface.

He also was looking forward to running against two of the county’s fastest sprinters, Orange Glen’s Glen Reyes, who ran a 10.7 last Thursday, and Mira Mesa’s Bobby Nelson, who has run 10.8.

Call it good timing, then, that the Titan Relays came along on Saturday and promised Moody an all-weather track, Reyes and Nelson.

Finally, Moody thought, a chance to run a race in which he would actually be challenged and perhaps could push his time lower. Moody said he was “pushed” Thursday, but it was really more of a nudge from Southwest’s Riley Washington, who finished in the mid-11s.

So there Moody was Saturday afternoon, lining up for the invitational 100. There already had been one disappointment. Reyes failed to show.

That set up a showdown between Moody and Nelson.

Nelson got the early jump as Moody slipped out of the blocks, but when the two came within a stride of the tape, they were dead even.

It came down to the lean, and Moody was able to bow his shoulders slightly farther than Nelson to eke out the victory a hand-timed 10.95 (the electronic timing equipment wasn’t working). Nelson finished at 10.99.

“The only thing I’m disappointed in was the start,” Moody said. “The starter didn’t give me enough time to get set.”

Despite being unable to match or beat 10.7, Moody nevertheless came out of the race with a smile. He quickly put the 10.95 in perspective.

“My best time last year was 10.95,” Moody said. “And that didn’t come until state.

“Last year at this time I was at 11.2 . . . When the Orange Glen Invitational comes along (April 15), I hope to be down to 10.7, or 10.6.”

Don’t get the wrong idea. Moody is not forecasting himself as the section champion. Not yet.

“All year long, it’s going to be a battle between Nelson, Reyes and myself,” he said.

Moody just won the first battle.

While many of the day’s times and distances were slow and short, three stood out. New South Wales of Australia set a meet record in the girls’ 3,200 meter relay, running 9:39.4 to beat the 9:43.86 set by Anaheim Esperanza in 1985.

In the girls’ triple jump, Henry’s Rachelle Johnson soared 39-feet-3.

The Mira Mesa boys’ 400-meter relay finished in 42.9, the only team under 43. Don Elder, Nelson, Marshall Evans and Gene Metcalf ran together for only the second time this year.

Elder, in fact, was running hard for the first time in three weeks, having just recuperated from a left hamstring pull. He ran the opening leg, faltering at the start as he slipped out of the blocks.

“I took off so hard that the blocks went flying back,” Elder said. “And if I hadn’t slipped up, our time would have been a lot better.”

It also would have been faster had the handoff from Evans to Metcalf gone smoothly, but Metcalf inadvertently put back the wrong hand to accept the baton.

Despite the goof, Metcalf maintained Mira Mesa’s lead over second-place Poway (43.14).