REDDING - After a short week turn around, the EAL North athletes returned to the Enterprise High School track and were joined by qualifiers from the EAL South.
Enterprise, the EAL North champions, took the Division 1 boys title with 125 1/2 points, a convincing performance over strong sqauds from Foothill (2nd - 99 pts), the runnerup in the EAL North, and Red Bluff (3rd - 91 1/2 pts), the EAL South champions. Unlike
the past versions of the team, the Hornets did so with almost no points from the distance events. Even with easy points from the pole vault (Foothill
is the only other league team with vaulters), the Hornets used five individual champions and superior depth in dominating both hurdles (Andrew Fitzhugh took both), high jump, triple jump, pole vault (20 points), shot put.
Chico, other
than possessing a fine distance crew and some hurdlers was a non-factor in the team competition to finish a distant sixth with 40 points. The Pleasant Valley crew was only marginally better holding down fifth position with 44 1/2 points. Brad Cox was Pleasant Valley's only winner
although his anchor leg in the long relay came up a scant .01 second short of a motivated crew from Red Bluff. In easily the upset of the day, Red Bluff's Eric Espinosa used a fast opening lap to surprise the field then holds on for the win the 1600 in 4:26.51. This mark was a twelve second PR enabling him to come away with a huge upset over favorites, Hunter Jensen of Shasta and Tony Meredith from Foothill.
Another memorable performance was delivered in the varsity boys 800m as the section leader in the event, Paradise's Dylan Chamberlen, scorched the field by running two sub 58 second laps to win by over 6 seconds.
In contrast to the boys, both the Chico and Pleasant Valley girls teams were in the hunt for the Big School team title. But both would came up short of the effort by Foothill Cougars. Foothill won with 121 points, Chico was next with 109 and the Vikings took third with 101. The 24 points garnered by the Cougars in the pole vault proved too much
for the Chico schools to overcome, although it would have been close if Kody
Atkins had pulled off another crazy quadruple as she did at the league championships...as it was she easily won the two races she did compete in, the 800, 1600.
Lily Brose got some measure of revenge as she edged Gabrielle Finley-Vaquera in both 100 and 200 races after Finley-Vaquera's superior anchor leg over the Spartan senior gave the Vikings the victory in the short relay. Both would go under the meet record in the 100m.
Other wins by the Vikings were earned by Melanie Hickman in the 3200, Lindsey Lundberg in the 300 hurdles in support of Brooke Whitburn's quality wins in the long & triple jumps. She broke the meet record in the former with a mark of 18-10. Red Bluff, despite six wins (400, shot put, discus and long relay in addition to Brose's two wins), finished fourth with 88 points, 60 of which came event victories but any further rise in the standings being crippled by their lack of team depth.
Lack of depth on not an issue for Foothill in fact it was their depth in enough events that produced their victory as they only had three wins on the day, in the pole vault, high jump and the short hurdles.
