For the first and only time this season, the athletes on Sedona Red Rock High School’s track and field team got to enjoy the benefits of a home meet, as SRRHS hosted the Sedona Invitational on Saturday, April 10.
One of the unique aspects of this meet was that it paired participants up by age group. In a normal meet, freshmen and sophomores could be in direct competition with juniors and seniors. This meet had designated freshman/sophomore and varsity flights in each event. That helped the Scorpions, who had four wins, three of which came in freshman/sophomore events.
Nia Trujillo won the freshman/sophomore 100 meter dash and was on the first-place 4×100 meter relay team. In both cases, the winning time [13.64 and 55.81, respectively] would have been good enough for fourth place in the upperclassmen division. Sophomore Bella Williams [20.26] won the underclassmen 100-meter hurdles race. Senior Courtney Hansen [32-10] also won the upperclassmen shot put event.
“The team did really good,” Sedona senior Eric Schrader said. “I heard from a couple people that PR’d and said it was their favorite meet. The hometown crowd and the fact that we didn’t have to drive probably helped.”
There were a number of other top three finishes. One was freshman Leila Bradley, who came in second in the javelin [72-5]. She lost to Chino Valley sophomore Danica McDonald, who’s winning distance [113-10] was better than anyone in the girls varsity. In fact, her distance was also better than anyone in the boys underclassmen event and would have been ninth in the boys varsity event.
Sedona senior Francisco Bekele notched a pair of second place finishes, as did junior Shota Yabuuchi. Bekele was second in the 200 [23.98] and 400 [54.15] meter races while Yabuuchi focused on the longer races, finishing runner up in the 1600 [4:36.22] and 3200 [10.25.89] meter races. In the 3200, Yabuuchi’s teammate and fellow junior, Jack Pierce, came in third place [12.13.28].
Freshman Skyla Bird was second in the 800 meters [2:47.98] and third in the 1600 [6:02.98]. In addition to her wins, Trujillo finished second in the 300 meter hurdles [56.03]. Williams’ height in the pole vault [8-0] was tied for first, but she came in third as it took her three jumps to reach that distance, while the girls she tied with reached it in one and two attempts, respectively. Hansen added a runner-up in the discus [97-0] to go with her shot put win.
Freshman Arabella Licher’s height [4-4] was good enough to tie her for second in the freshman/sophomore high jump event. Though, since she needed one more jump than the competitor she tied with, Licher finished third. Junior Odin McGinness [131-1] was third in the boys varsity javelin, as was Schrader in the pole vault [13-0], a finish he noted signifies how much that event has changed since he entered high school.
“In the past few years the pole vault has gotten super competitive,” he said. “Four years ago, 13 feet would have won state — now it’s third place. But it definitely pushes me — especially since I’ve only really done it for three years because we lost all last season. I’m trying to strive for as high as I can.”
The Scorpions will be busy for the rest of the season, with five more meets in April before the regular season wraps up on Saturday, May 1 at the Valley Christian Late Qualifier in Chandler.
The next meet for Sedona will be at the Alhambra Valley Classic at Phoenix’s Alhambra High School on Saturday, April 17.
“The team is meshing really well,” Schrader said. “We’re all good friends. There’s no animosity; it’s a close knit team already. It’s a very young team. We only have five seniors and might be one of the teams that doesn’t get hit with a big wave of the seniors leaving. I think we’re doing well for such a young team.”
