<\/p>\n
It was quite a day at Cerritos College for the Moore League athletes competing in the CIF-SS Division Finals, with Poly’s girls’ team winning their third championship in a row, the boys’ Trackrabbits team coming in second, and great performances from Millikan, Wilson, Jordan and Lakewood athletes as well.<\/p>\n
The Poly girls continued to make history, winning a third straight CIF title, their seventh of the last ten years. <\/span>In 18 of the last 19 years, the Poly girls’ team has been either first place, or second in CIF-SS. <\/span>“We’ve been blessed,” said Poly girls’ coach Crystal Irving, whose team has their eyes fixed beyond the section meet. <\/span>“This is almost like a bonus,” she explained. <\/span>“Our big thing is always to stay healthy, because our main goal is state.”<\/p>\n Well they put on quite a show in the bonus round, scoring 105.5 points, just the eighth time in meet history a Division 1 girls’ team has gone over the century mark\u2014with seven of those times also coming form Poly (the Wilson Bruins were the other, in 2005). <\/span>The margin of victory (La Sierra was in second with 38 points) was the largest the girls’ team has ever had. <\/span>And remember that the vast majority of the team is coming back next season, too.<\/p>\n Millikan had a great day on the girls’ side as well, placing fourth among the 37 teams competing with a score of 32. <\/span>All 32 of those points came from either Ashley Smith (who put up 24 points with second-place finishes in the girls’ 100-meter hurdles, the 200-meter dash, and the high jump) or Paisley Pettway (who scored 8 with a second-place finish in the 800-meter). <\/span><\/p>\n Smith also broke the school record in a wind-aided 200-meter, with a time of 23.55, giving her the school record in every event except the throws, the long distance runs, and the 100-meter. <\/span>After her 200-meter, she and Pettway had Millikan in second place, which she was excited about. <\/span>“It’s really cool, because that means Paisley and I are dominating and doing what we’re supposed to be doing,” she said.<\/p>\n Wilson placed sixth with a team total of 29, with Anna Hernandez, Imani Pearson, Christina Smith, and Alycia Presley finishing third in the 4X400 relay, Fabrina Espinoza winning the long jump with a 19-foot jump, and Espinoza placing third in the triple jump as the highlights. <\/p>\n Jordan and Lakewood got on the girls’ leaderboard with two and one points respectively, Jordan’s coming from freshman La Troya Franklin’s seventh-place finish in the 200-meter, and Lakewood’s from Larisha Fields’ eighth-best discus throw.<\/p>\n The team performance from Poly, though, was extraordinary even for a team that’s had a run of recent success. <\/span>In the 16 events (boys and girls) that Poly entered, the lowest top placement they notched was fourth\u2014and that was only in two events. <\/span>In the other 14 they had a competitor at third or higher, including six wins: the boys’ 4X100, Melia Cox’s 100-meter hurdles, which saw her edge Millikan’s Smith by .09 seconds, the girls’ and boys’ 4X400, and Tara Richmond’s triple jump (Cox took second) and high jump.<\/p>\n As a team, the Poly boys finished second to Vista Murrieta (Nike’s no. 1 team in the nation), falling 73.50 to 57. <\/span>Kyle Byrdsong, Kameron Jackson, Kameron White, and Kaelin Clay took the 4X100 and the Rabbits won a thrilling 4X400 to close the day’s action. <\/span>Poly and Roosevelt were neck and neck, each holding the lead twice\u2014Clay managed to fight off the Roosevelt runner as they came over the cones, barely holding the inside track. <\/span>Shaq Howard came from behind on the anchor leg to get a chest in front for a come-from-behind win by .12 seconds that had the whole crowd on its feet. <\/span>“I knew I could catch [the Roosevelt runner] in the straightaway,” he said, “so I just had to not panic and use up my energy.” <\/span>Aaron Harris and Chris Hall ran the other two legs.<\/p>\n The only non-Poly boys’ competitor from Long Beach was Kody Robison, who took second in the shot-put for Millikan with a throw of 54’11.5″.<\/p>\n Congrats to all who competed in a fun day of track and field action\u2014CIF Masters are next weekend, and later this week we’ll post a list of who will be competing. <\/span>You can click here for a list of full results from the Divisional Finals<\/a>. Click here for our video highlight of the meet<\/a>, including the CIF plaque presentation, and click here for a small photo gallery<\/a>.<\/span> The Rabbits won their seventh title in the last ten years as the boys took runner-up, and Millikan’s Paisley Pettway and Ashley Smith nabbed fourth place for the Rams.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-1160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1160\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1160"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=1160"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"