Hillsdale relay shines on the national stage

“[Nike Outdoor Nationals has] some really tough, strict qualifying standards,” said Chris Lucey, head coach for Hillsdale track and field as well as working with San Mateo Track Club. “You have to hit a (qualifying) standard (during the high school season).”

The SMTC quartet of Zeki Soudah, Christian Salamanca, Nisith Andrabadu and Jonas Bell — all from Hillsdale — put out the word that they will be a relay team to contend with next high school season as they finished second in the 4x100-meter relay of the “Emerging Elite Division,” which is a step below the “Championship Division.”

The quartet covered the one lap around the Hayward Field track in 43.00 seconds flat, with I270 TC-Maryland winning the race with a time of 42.73.

The Hillsdale foursome finished one one-hundredth of a second ahead of third-place Redwood Valley TC-Minnesota.

“We ran a really great race,” Lucey said. “ (We won with a) lean at the tape.”

The winning time in the Championship Division was 41.55 run by Arrowhead TC-Wisconsin.

The performance capped a long run up to the meet for the Peninsula relay team. While the finals of the state meet was May 31, three of the four runners Sunday — Andrabadu, Salamanca and Soudah, all of whom have recently wrapped up their sophomore years — hadn’t run competitively since teaming with Jakob Gowdy to win the PAL Frosh-Soph title May 3.

Bell, a rising senior, was part of the relay team that won the PAL Varsity relay championship and finished second at the Central Coast Section finals.

When they found out they had qualified for the Nike Outdoor Nationals, they set about making the trip to Oregon worth their while.

“We saw we hit the qualifying time. They were gung ho to go,” Lucey said. “It’s a high-level national meet and they said, ‘Let’s give it a shot.’”

The performance didn’t come out of the blue. Hillsdale has put together one of the top sprint programs in the PAL over the last couple of years and this team was putting together strong performances during the frosh-soph season. In addition to the PAL Frosh-Soph title, they also won the frosh-soph race at the CCS Top 8 Invite at Los Gatos High School in April.

“We knew they would improve on their season record. As a frosh-soph quartet, they were running 44 (seconds) and change,” Lucey said. “They’ve all been working so hard.”

Making the final was not assured, however. Not only does the Nike Outdoor Nationals attract top-level talent from around the nation, the prelims were held in what Lucey said was, “a torrential downpour.”

In the preliminaries Saturday, the Hillsdale foursome qualified fifth with a time of 43.60, just ahead of team from Menlo-Atherton Athletic Club. Joshua Olsen, Alexander Leonardo, Alex Petry and Jacob Roeder qualified sixth with a time of 43.85.

A third relay team from a Central Coast Section school, Scotts Valley Track Club, also qualified for the final with a second-place finish in 43.45. Menlo-Atherton AC and Scotts Valley TC would finish the final in eighth and fourth, respectively.

“The goal was to go up (to Oregon) and make the final and do well,” Lucey said.

There were a number of other San Mateo County athletes in Oregon, as well. Recent Menlo School graduate Landon Pretre, one of the most decorated runners in county history, competed in three distance events: the 1,500 meter, the 1,600 meter and the Mile races, all in the Championship Division. Running for Menlo iGreyhounds Track Club, Pretre finished fifth in the 1,500 with a time of 3:49.27; was 10th in the 1,600 with a 4:05.30 and 10th in the Mile with a time of 4:06.87.

All three were personal records for Pretre.

One of Pretre’s high school teammates, Brady Tse, finished sixth in the 400 hurdles with a time of 54.80.

The Fitzgerald brothers of San Mateo High School, recent graduate Emmanuel Fitzgerald and rising senior Yianni Fitzgerald, competed in the throw events. Emmanuel Fitzgerald was fifth in the discus in the Emerging Elite division, with a new PR of 169 feet, 6 inches. Yianni Fitzgerald set a new PR in the shot put in the Elite division with a mark of 51-9 3/4 to finish 14th.

On the girls’ side, Carlmont hurdler Kianna Chen, competing for Belmont Track Club, was 14th in the 400 hurdles with a time of 1:04.85. Avery Boyse, a pole vaulter from Burlingame who won the PAL title after clearing 13 feet, tied for 19th in Oregon, with a best of 11-9.

That height won Boyse the CCS title.

Meanwhile, Sineth Andrabadu, a recent Hillsdale graduate and a two-time winner of the PAL 100 championship, competed in the 100- and 200-meter sprints at the New Balance National Outdoors meet at Penn. He ran a 10.98 in the 100 and 22.10 in the 200 prelims, failing to reach the final in either event.

Nathan Mollat has been covering high school sports in San Mateo County for the San Mateo Daily Journal since 2001. He can be reached by email: nathan@smdailyjournal.com.