Region 4C boys' track meet

WINCHESTER — The Millbrook boys’ 4x400-meter relay might not have liked its position coming into Thursday, but the Pioneers are flying high now.

The Pioneers put their best 4x400 team on the track for the first time since they placed second at the Class 4 indoor meet, and Millbrook surpassed that indoor effort by 1.66 seconds and its outdoor best time by 2.69 seconds with a winning time of 3:25.08 to close out the Region 4C track & field meet at the Pioneers’ home stadium.

Senior and defending Class 4 800-meter state champion Nick Hayden made up a deficit of more than five meters on the anchor leg with a sub-50-second split to propel the Pioneers past Tuscarora. The top-seeded Huskies finished in 3:27.72, 2.64 seconds behind the Pioneers, which had senior Scott Montgomery, junior Elijah McGee and senior Landon Baker run the first three legs of the relay.

Millbrook coach Joe Hall said the members of the team were down about losing to James Wood at the Pioneers’ Last Chance Invitational on May 12, and being the fourth seed on Thursday.

But there was plenty of joy under the dark sky when Hayden crossed the finish line, as seemingly every member of the Millbrook boys’ and girls’ teams congratulated the members of the relay in some fashion before heading home from the meet that ended close to 9 p.m.

“I’ve been telling the guys all year, ‘Hey, we haven’t run our ‘A’ squad yet,’” Hall said. “I was kind of like, ‘OK, we’ve got some fast teams in here that will push us, let’s see what happens.’ You can’t ask for much more from the guys.”

Millbrook won five events total to account for 50 of the team’s 56 points, the top total for local teams and good for a fifth-place finish in the 16-team meet. Hayden won the 800, senior Javell Holmes captured the high jump and long jump, and the 4x100 team was also victorious. Holmes’ third-place finish in the triple jump wrapped up the Pioneers’ scoring.

Led by junior 400 champion Brady Hamilton, Sherando took sixth with 50 points. Junior Will Pardue (1,600) and sophomore Jaishaun Offutt (shot put) each won events for Handley (eighth with 42 points). James Wood was ninth with 38.

Tuscarora won the meet with 83.5 points, three more than runner-up Loudoun Valley (80.5).

The top four placers in each event, as well as those with qualifying times and standards, advance to the Class 4 state meet on June 2 and 3 at Liberty University in Lynchburg.

Hayden didn’t run at the Last Chance meet because he was in White Plains, N.Y., at the Loucks Games, a meet that features more than 200 schools. Earlier this spring, Hayden missed two of Millbrook’s weekend meets after traveling to California for the Arcadia Invitational. The Pioneers decided not to run in the 4x400 at the Class 4 Northwestern District meet after not everyone felt 100 percent because of things that had happened earlier in the meet.

The Pioneers have a deep enough pool of athletes for the 4x400 that they were able to achieve a state-qualifying time before Thursday, but they needed Hayden at the Region 4C meet when Tuscarora ended the third lap with a healthy lead.

Hayden wasn’t fazed by the deficit in the least. He caught the Huskies 150 meters in, quickly pulled away and didn’t let up to give Millbrook a no-doubt victory.

“I love to chase people,” Hayden said. “Once I got the guy 150 meters in, I just did my thing [from there].”

Earlier in the meet, Hayden did just enough to win the 800 in his first time running the event outdoors in a Virginia High School League meet since his state championship last June.

Hayden trailed Loudoun Valley’s Jake Rimmel after the first lap and stayed on his shoulder the second lap. Heading into the final 200, there was still a pack of six runners in contention for the lead, a situation where someone could easily get boxed in. Hayden ran hard enough and ran on the outside of Lane 1 to keep four runners behind him, though, and as the field entered the final straightaway he charged to the outside and passed Rimmel with 70 meters left. Hayden won with a time of 1:57.10, 0.38 ahead of Rimmel.

“Today was not about time,” Hayden said. “I was just going for the win.”

Hayden’s two previous 800 runs this year were at the Arcadia Invitational and the Loucks Games. The Arcadia Invitational wasn’t ideal — he ran a 1:56.52 in training shoes because his spikes didn’t meet the meet’s guidelines — but the Loucks Games went exceptionally. Hayden recorded a 1:52.82 to place fifth out of 60 runners and finish almost a full second faster than his previous best at last year’s state meet.

Hayden — who will run for NCAA Division I Columbia University next year — said both meets were good for him.

“Running against good competition, and trying to be able to navigate those packs that are really dense with really fast kids definitely helps,” Hayden said.

Holmes — the Most Outstanding Performer at the Apple Blossom Invitational earlier this season — was coming off a district meet in which the only event he scored points in was the high jump, and that was with a mark of 6-0 that was three inches below his personal best.

On Thursday, he was seeded eighth in the long jump but exceeded his personal best by more than six inches to win with a mark of 21-4. Holmes was one of only two people to clear 20 feet and he won by 9.5 inches.

Holmes didn’t face all of the region’s best high jumpers. Handley coach Mike McKiernan said the knee of sophomore Northwestern District champion Hassan Akanbi (top mark, 6-6) was bothering him last week while jumping, so he was held out of the event, and Sherando coach Brad Symons said sophomore Micah Carlson (top mark, 6-6) was held out to ease his workload. (There was also a lengthy delay in the discus, which Carlson stars in, after a woman was hit with a discus. Millbrook coordinator of student activities TJ Rohbaugh stated in a text message Friday that she’s in good condition.)

But Holmes did beat the third person to jump 6-6 at the Northwestern District meet, Fauquier’s Wyatt Shaw. Both Holmes and Shaw cleared 6-4 on their first attempt, but Shaw needed three attempts to clear 6-2 and Holmes needed only one, giving Holmes the win on a tiebreaker.

Holmes placed third in the triple jump with a mark of 41-3.

“My goal was just to focus on myself and compete with myself, and get the outcome I wanted to get,” Holmes said.

Hall said it was good to see Holmes deliver.

“For him to come back when it really mattered and really score well for us in the jumps was amazing,” Hall said.

Millbrook’s 4x100 team came in as the top seed. For a moment it looked like Loudoun Valley might beat the Pioneers, but once the anchor leg Baker picked up a full head of steam a third of the way through it was over for the Vikings. Fellow seniors Tyler Lam, Montgomery and Logan Downs ran the first three legs of the relay that recorded a 43.27 to Loudoun Valley’s 43.44.

“We thought we could win it as long as our handoffs were clean,” Hall said.

Sherando’s Hamilton was the No. 3 seed in the original meet program, but he became the No. 1 seed when his actual race started after Rock Ridge’s Kamaal Reed and Tuscarora’s David Seekford each chose not to run.

Just like Hamilton did at the ABI and district meet, the junior showed that he doesn’t need anyone pushing him to run fast. Hamilton dusted the field by 1.47 seconds in 49.54, 1.01 seconds better than his personal best.

“I’ve been working on it all season,” said Hamilton of running under 50 seconds. “I knew at one point eventually I was going to hit sub-50. It meant a lot to me.”

Sherando was also led by Carlson (second in the discus, 149-2); junior Ethan Gonzalez (second in the shot put, 49-1.25); senior AJ Santiago (third in the long jump, 19-9); sophomore Noah Harris (fourth in the high jump, 6-0); and the 4x100 team of Jayden Patten, Santiago, Carlson and Hamilton (fourth in 44.05).

Handley’s Pardue didn’t waste any time in the 1,600, taking big leads after each lap. He ran a 59-second 400, a 2:03 800 and a 3:09 1,200. Top-seeded Broad Run senior Tarek Benlamkaddem made a charge in the final 100 but Pardue’s lead was way too big for it to matter. Pardue won in a PR of 4:16.63, 2.02 seconds ahead of Benlamkaddem.

Pardue said a big reason why he decided to go out as fast as he did was because he’s been battling illness for the past few weeks. He said he developed a sore throat and fever around the Apple Blossom Invitational.

“The goal was to go out in what I thought I could do, then run with whatever I had left,” Pardue said. “I kind of had to take a risk this late in the season. I think I executed it well. The third lap was a little slow. The final time, I wish it was a little faster, but after being sick, I’m pretty happy.”

Handley coach Mike McKiernan would have liked to see Pardue dial his pace back a bit for the first two laps, but he thought it was a strong performance.

“He wanted to run well,” McKiernan said. “I think his confidence is back, because his confidence was rattled when he was sick. He just couldn’t seem to get over it and run better.”

In Offutt, Handley has a thrower bursting with potential.

After setting a PR of 49-10 to win the Northwestern District meet, Offutt bested that total three times on Thursday and twice surpassed 50 feet. His best mark was a 50-3, more than a foot better than Sherando’s Gonzalez.

A 6-foot-4, 310-pound football lineman, Offutt competed in the shot put in indoor for a while, then gave it up to focus on basketball. Offutt said he’s enjoying it this spring, and doing better than he expected.

“It’s good to see my hard work is paying off,” Offutt said.

Offutt said he’s been working hard on his technique, and he’ll likely be even better once he incorporates more movement into his throws.

“The young man is a beast,” McKiernan said. “He’s just a big young man. He’s exceeded expectations.”

McKiernan was pleased by the performance of Will Thomas, who placed third in the 3,200 in 9:43.71 and qualified for freshman nationals with his time, this after missing the nationals cut by half a second at the district meet. The Judges were also led by junior Garrett Stickley (third in the 1,600, 4:20.53) and junior Peter Kim (fourth in the pole vault, 11-6).

Senior Aaron Lee — who has the area’s fastest times in the 100 (11.16) and 200 (22.27) this year and has qualified for the state meet in both events — did not run on Thursday, this after also sitting out the district meet. Lee has been dealing with a quad injury since before the ABI meet in late April. McKiernan said the quad injury had healed, but Lee reinjured it the week of the district meet. The hope is that Lee can run at the state meet.

James Wood was led by its 4x800 team of Eli Clark, Will Andrews, Colton Staneart and Ethan Pratt-Perez (second in 8:13.47); its 4x400 team of Landon Burdock, Andrew Link, Zach Smith and Trenton Manili (third in 3:29.37); Link in the 300 hurdles (third in 40.93); and Pratt-Perez in the 800 (1:59.21).

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