PERFORMANCE: Riverside Poly High School track athletes represent well at a high-level state meet.
By Abigail Burke, Staff Writer
15 athletes made the five-hour trek this Presidents’ Day weekend up to Fresno for the California Indoor Track and Field Championships to represent Riverside Poly High School. In order to participate in this event, the runners had to qualify at the Corona All-Comers by meeting a certain time or finishing first or second in their heat.
Indoor track is 145 meters around and sloped very different from a normal outdoor track, which is 400 meters long and flat. This posed a challenge for our athletes who are accustomed to pacing on outdoor tracks. “The shorter laps made it a lot harder to pace yourself, and also because of how close the lanes were with the curve, it made the races more aggressive when trying to pass someone,” Captain Kyle Mackechnie (11) said. Even athlete Kalea Ibarra (9) who ran on this track twice before in past years said, “The curves and the distance of the indoor track make it challenging because it’s different from what I normally run on.” However, the Poly athletes were able to overcome this challenge and finished very well at the meet.
Ibarra was one of the many athletes from Poly with an outstanding performance in her races. She placed first in the 800 meter and fifth on the girl’s indoor California state meet all-time list with a time of 2:19.16. Ibarra along with Alexis Louis (12), Alexandra Stetkevich (11) and Christina Winn (12) won the 4×400 for their heat. Stetkevich also performed well at this meet. She finished second in her heat in the very competitive girls’ one mile race and hopes to return next year and perform even better. “Running this year was a great learning experience and has left me with motivation to run faster in future races,” Stetkevich said.
A standout performance from the Poly boys came from the 4×400 relay team, including John Burke (12), Deion Molina (11), Christian Nunez (12) and Preston Dodson (12), who all placed 2nd in their heat. Brandon Joseph (12) represented Poly well finishing 1st in the 600 meter for his heat.
With the completion of the state meet, the runners will start to focus on preparing for league meets. “The indoor state meet was a great opportunity to run against some of the best runners in the state and I believe that this will prepare us for the upcoming track season,” Coach Alfonzo Ibarra stated.