Felix Set to Race in Sprints at Mt. SAC

Allyson Felix of North Hills L.A. Baptist, the dominant girls’ sprinter in the nation this season, will run in the women’s 200-meter dash Saturday in the Mt. San Antonio College Relays at Walnut.

Felix, the two-time defending state champion in the 100, will run in that event and the 400 relay in the high school portion of the Mt. SAC Relays on Friday. She will also compete the following day against a 200 field that is expected to include Americans Chryste Gaines, Torri Edwards, Angela Williams and Inger Miller.

Gaines and Edwards were ranked fourth and ninth in the world in the 100 last year, Williams won an unprecedented four consecutive NCAA titles in the 100 for USC from 1999-2002 and Miller won the 200 in the 1999 World Championships at Seville, Spain, before being slowed by injuries since.

“The competition is really good and I wanted to see how I could run against all these good women,” Felix said about the 200. “This will be a good indication of where I’m at in my training and to see what parts of my race I need to work on.”

Felix ranks third on the all-time national high school list in the girls’ 200 with a best of 22.83 seconds, but said it might be too early in the season to approach the national record of 22.58 set by Marion Jones of Thousand Oaks in 1992.

“I definitely want to be running faster than I did at Arcadia,” Felix said of her 22.97 clocking in the Arcadia Invitational on Saturday. “But I’m not sure how much faster. There’s still a lot of time left in the season.”

Seniors Billie Jo Grant of Arroyo Grande, Sharon Day of Costa Mesa and Thomas Mack of Bakersfield and junior Michael Haddan of Irvine Woodbridge are other defending state champions who will compete in the high school portion of the meet that includes the boys’ and girls’ four-mile relays today.

Grant ranks fifth on the all-time national list in the girls’ discus with a best of 183 feet 6 inches and Day is tied for ninth in the high jump at 6-2.

Haddan is the defending state champion in the boys’ 800 and Mack is the defending champion in the 110 high hurdles and 300 intermediates.

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Donovan Kilmartin of Eagle, Idaho, did not start the first day of the decathlon competition of the Mt. SAC Relays on Wednesday because of illness.

Kilmartin had been expected to challenge the national high school record of 7,359 points set by Craig Brigham in 1972.