Ramona girls track and field dominate Oceanside
By Joe Naiman
Ramona High School’s girls track and field team won first-place points in nine of the 16 events that comprised the Bulldogs’ April 18 Valley League home meet against Oceanside and ended with a 75-53 Ramona victory.
“I was pleased. It was an overall really good team effort,” said head coach Sherri Edwards.
Ramona earned 37 of the 54 field event points, including 25 of the 30 first-place points for the six field events.
“That’s a lot,” Edwards said. “I’m really happy to get that many points in the field events. But we also had some exciting things happen on the track, too.”
Ramona swept the scoring positions in both throws events. Karah Banegas threw the shot put 35’ and the discus 97’ for first place in both contests. Kristy Banegas threw the shot put 27’7” for second place while Samantha Koegel’s distance of 26’2” came in third. Claire Hagan had the second-place discus mark at 84’5” and Valissa Espinosa’s 79’6” distance took third.
Courtney Jackson broke her own school record in the pole vault with a first-place distance of 10’6”. Callie Guasti finished first in the high jump at 5’, second in the long jump at 15’1”, and third in the triple jump with a distance of 30’10-1/2”.
“I was pleased with Callie Guasti. She did three events and placed in all three of them,” Edwards said.
Although the Pirates had the top two distances in the triple jump, teammate Courtney Ford had the first-place long jump mark at 15’5-1/2”.
The running events included two wins apiece by Holly Stallman and Carlee Roberts. Stallman’s winning time of 26.73 seconds in the 200-meter dash was complemented by Ford’s third-place performance of 28.22 seconds.
Stallman won the 100-meter dash in 12.62 seconds.
“It was a really close race,” Edwards said. “She just out-leaned the girl from Oceanside.”
Roberts had winning times of 17.56 seconds in the 100-meter hurdles and 52.12 seconds in the 300-meter hurdles. Ramona freshman Emily Sojourner finished second in both races, taking 18.00 seconds for the 100-meter hurdles and 54.47 seconds for the 300-meter hurdles.
“That was nice getting 8 points in those two events,” Edwards said.
The Bulldogs took second and third in the 400-meter race with Katherine Lorentz racing for 57.28 seconds and Sarah Sears crossing the finish line 1:11.00 after the starter’s gun was fired. Ramona also took second and third in the 1,600-meter run with Ciara Lucas finishing in 5:38.89 and freshman Perla Cruz having a time of 5:57.84. Lucas was also second in the 800-meter race at 2:39.72.
The two relay races give points only to the winning team; Oceanside won both of those. Ramona did not contest the 3,200-meter race.
Some of Ramona’s girls also competed in the Grizzly Invite meet April 20 at Mission Hills High School. The school record Jackson set two days earlier fell during that invitational, and her pole vault distance of 11’ took second place at the Grizzly Invite. Stallman, a freshman, had a fourth-place time of 11.2 seconds in the 100-meter dash.
The Bulldogs travel to Del Norte High School for Thursday’s Valley League dual meet. Some of Ramona’s older athletes will compete in Friday night’s Escondido Invitational while the younger competitors will return to Del Norte High School for Saturday’s Dick Wilkins Frosh-Soph Invitational meet.