Gusty performance at Zimmerly meet

Home track and field meets can be a mixed bag for athletes as they face the distractions of friends and family, but, on the other hand, there is the convenience of being in a familiar setting.

And in actuality, there is probably more stress for the home coaches who have to put on the meet, making sure all the many moving parts somehow form a cohesive whole.

So there was a certain amount of relief in her voice as Socorro girls track coach Beth Cadol discussed playing host to the Zimmerly Relays on March 29.

“It was the first time I’ve run a high school track meet on my own,” she said. “I’ve helped before but this is my first year of really having to do it all. I have a team of coaches that helped, but having a bird’s eye view of the organization was a little overwhelming. And I asked for volunteers and this community showed up. And I could not have done it without the coaches and the volunteers.”

That being said, the Warriors turned in some pretty strong performances on both the boys and girls sides of things.

“I was really happy with how they did this weekend,” Socorro boys coach Anthony Baker said. “With home meets, there’s a little bit more of a distraction with friends there, but we had some real gutsy performances.”

Leading the list, sprinter Isaiah Ocampo sailed through the 100- and 200-meter dashes, winning in 11.73 and 24.09 seconds respectively. He added a second in the discus and fourth shot put and was part of the winning 4X100 relay team to finish as the high-point scorer.

Seeing Ocampo scamper through the sprints was a particularly a good sign, Baker said, as it was his first meet to do running events.

But even outside of Ocampo’s performance, it was a well-rounded Warriors day as they finished third among 12 teams with 78 points. Ruidoso won the meet with 85.5 points.

“Overall, we had a lot of kids show up and give their best performance of the year,” Baker said.” We’re really happy with what we did. If we can move a couple of kids around, we could have won it. It was a lot to build on and a lot to look forward to for district and state.”

Other standouts included Kyle Berger, who won the 800 in 2:04.11, also anchored the winning medley relay quartet and took fourth in the javelin.

Ruben Gonzales sailed over the high jump in 5-feet, 8-inches to win the event.

Julian Aldrich 38-feet, 7.5-inches to take third in the shot and also was sixth in the discus.

On the girls side of things, the Warriors were sixth with 35 points among 12 teams with Moriarty taking first with 95 points.

“We’re really young but it’s a really talented group of athletes,” Cadol said.

“Because of running the meet, I had very little bandwith to spend on actual coaching. They performed very well. It can go either way at a home meet. Expectations are heightened and sometimes that can be distracting. They all stepped up and did a really good job. As long as they can say they did their best then I am so proud of them.”

Among the standouts, freshman hurdler Ma’Leah Brown took second in the 300 hurdles in 53.89, leaving her very close to automatically qualifying for the state meet.

“She’s really come a long way and worked hard,” Cadol said of Brown, who scored the most points for Socorro. “The work isn’t flashy and it’s not fun, but she’s putting in the work and it’s paying off for her.”

And the 4X800 relay group of Abby Cadol, Breanne Lucero, Kathleen Johnson and Esther Gutierrez set a school record of 12:05.85, besting the old mark by more than two minutes.

“It’s never been a real popular event with us and we’ve never had four distance runners to put together competitive 4X800 team,” the coach said. “We run it for team points, but we’ve never had four girls who actually run distance but we’ve built the distance group through cross country and track and in the off season.”

The Warriors also got a strong effort in the pole vault, with Lucero taking third and Sienna Bunning fourth, while Adrianna Gutierrez snagged fourth in the long jump.

“We’re not quite up to winning a 12-team meet, the girls team is not quite there at such a big meet,” Cadol said. “But we had a lot of girls try events that they haven’t tried before. The goal for me is to put kids in different situations, different events and we’re still trying to see where their strengths lie. They all out-performed my expectations. All of them.”

MAGDLAENA

Being the smallest school at a large track meet is not anything new for the Steers and the boys squad more than held its own, finishing with 19 points in 10th place, ahead of Class 3A schools Santa Fe Prep and Hot Springs.

“We didn’t have a full team because of spring break so it was a watered down team,” coach Sara Sue Olney said. “With that said, I thought we did really well. Everybody that was there did a really good job, given the races we did run. We need to work on things still, and do some tweaking of the relay teams. But overall, I think it was a great effort.”

Ky Stephens won the 110 hurdles in 17.65 and was third in the triple jump. Kanaan Stephens also placed in two events, fifth in the javelin and sixth in the 100 hurdles.

And the 4X200 relay was fourth.

Things didn’t go quite as well for the short-handed girls, who managed a single point as the 4X400 relay team took sixth.