Hawthorne Withdraws From Invitational Track Meets to Let Injuries Heal

Hawthorne High School track Coach Kye Courtney, citing a mounting list of injuries, has pulled his team from Saturday’s prestigious Arcadia Invitational meet and will not allow the Cougars to run in any invitationals for the rest of the season.

Courtney said Hawthorne will gear its efforts toward the CIF-Southern Section meets, which begin May 11 with the 4-A Division preliminaries. The Cougar boys are defending Southern Section 4-A and State Division I champions.

“We had to make a decision what we wanted to do for the rest of this season,” he said. “Either we could compete in the invitationals or we could concentrate on the CIF (meets).”

Courtney said he discussed the options with his athletes, and they decided that the Southern Section meets were more important.

In the meantime, Hawthorne will concentrate on its Bay League dual meets. The Cougar boys improved to 4-0 in league action by defeating Rolling Hills, 70-55, last week.

Prior to his announcement, Courtney was looking forward to the return of his top sprinter, Chris Alexander, at the Arcadia Invitational. But Alexander re-injured a hamstring muscle in practice Monday, causing the coach to pull his team from the Arcadia meet, which draws many of the nation’s top prep athletes.

“We would like to be able to compete in the invitationals,” Courtney said. “But at this point, someone will get injured if we go out there.”

Alexander’s running has been limited because of the hamstring pull. The 5-foot-9, 178-pound senior placed fifth in the state 100-meter dash last year with a time of 10.68 seconds. So far this season, though, he has been limited to running on Hawthorne’s 400-meter relay team.

Alexander also has his future to think about. A running back in football, he signed a letter of intent with UCLA.

Minor injuries to Cougar sprinters Eric Allen and Dave Smith were contributing factors in Courtney’s decision. Though Allen and Smith have competed with their injuries, Courtney said it is better to rest them so they will be at top form for the more important meets.

“It would have been self-defeating for us to put a team out there running on injuries,” Courtney said. “We wouldn’t have been able to beat anyone we wanted to right now.”

Other weekend meets from which Hawthorne has withdrawn are the Mt. Carmel High School Invitational in San Diego and the Mt. San Antonio College Invitational.

“The one team that we wanted to compete against was Muir, but right now they would have an edge over us,” Courtney said. “The only time we can compete with them is when we are at 100%. Right now, we are only at 80 to 90%.”

Courtney has the team on a rigorous training schedule to keep his runners in condition. Every day, he said, they run three miles and swim for two hours.

A bright spot for the Cougars has been the sprinting of junior Thomas Cole in the 100 and 200 meters. He swept those events last week against Rolling Hills with times of 11.0 seconds in the 100 and 22.6 in the 200.