Boys 4x400m Relay - 2015 Outdoor States
Apologies for the race films presented here. The action at SUNY Albany for outdoor States was great, but there was no opportunity to film the action the way it should have been done. Track-side near the finish was the best we were allowed to do.
There were seemingly three ways that the boys 4x400m championship race could play out on Saturday, June 13, 2015 following the D1 action of the evening before that saw Newburgh, Boys & Girls, and Amsterdam finish within a second of each other. Amsterdam's Izaiah Brown had reeled off a 45.78 anchor leg to almost bring his team back from a big deficit on a day in which he had won the 400m individual title over Boys & Girls star Richard Rose with a 46.40 meet record while Rose ran a 47.02. Newburgh had gotten out to an early lead in the D1 4x400m and four fairly even legs gave the Goldbacks the win at 3:18.10.
The situation changed on Saturday after Brown scratched from the 400m after feeling some tightness after Friday's runs. But the scratch also eliminated him from his team's relay squad, and that took the Rams out of contention. Favorite Newburgh and Boys & Girls then went at it, and for most of the first two legs everything was tight. But by the halfway point Boy & Girls had a lead over North Rockland, which passed a fading Newburgh. Huntington then moved up to within a second of the Kangaroos, whose first three legs of Shayne Simpson, Shavanes Robinson, and Anija Addison completed their circuits at 2:28.41 to pass the baton to Rose. The Boys & Girls anchor had taken the 400m championship on Saturday with a time of 47.23, and he had no challengers during a 46.64 leg that brought the Kangaroos home in 3:15.05. Huntington finished up 2nd at 3:16.73, and Half Hollow Hills West, North Rockland, Newburgh and Saratoga completed the top 6.
Interview with Richard Rose of Boys and Girls after he won the 400m individual championship.
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Girls 4x400m Relay - 2015 Outdoor States
Two powerful teams matched up in the girls 4x400m on Saturday for what was looking to be another epic battle after Rush-Henrietta had powered to almost a 3 second victory over Suffern in the D1 race with a 3:43.94 time that would be by far the fastest at the meet. By the final race of the 2016 States though, fatigue was starting to play a factor. Rush-Henrietta's vaunted quartet of freshman Lanae-Tava Thomas, junior Tori Thompson, senior Ceara Watson, and sophomore Sammy Watson had an extremely busy two days at States, and by late Saturday afternoon, something had to have been taken out of their legs. On that day, Thomas had competed in the long jump, taken 3rd in the 100m, and just run a leg of the Royal Comets' 2nd place 4x100m; Thompson had competed in the 100m and also just done the 4x100m relay; Ceara Watson had finished 3rd in the 400m; and Sammy Watson had won the 400m easily and 1500m by a whisker. That's a lot of expended energy on the second straight day of competition.
Suffern had also been busy. Though two of the legs, junior Nicole Becker and sophomore Kyra Greenbaum, had not seen action yet on Saturday, senior Imani Solan had finished 2nd in the 200m and sophomore anchor Kamryn McIntosh had won the 800m in a meet record 2:05.63. More critically though, McIntosh had recently expended a lot of energy on a 2:04.75 anchor leg of Suffern's 4x800m that carried the Mounties to a 2nd place.
From the start it was clear that the Championship race was going to be hugely different from the D1 race. Suffern was up among the lead squads after the end of Greenbaum's opening leg, and though Port Washington and then Uniondale briefly had the lead on the second leg, Solan made a charge to open up more than a 1 1/2 second lead at the halfway point. Rush-Henrietta just did not enough left as they were last after the first leg and still only 7th at the halfway point. Becker just needed to hold the lead on the Mounties' third leg for McIntosh to have clear sailing on the anchor, and she did that though Shenendehowa made a surge to pull up within a second of the lead. Despite her recent effort in the 4x800m, McIntosh unleashed a 53.57 split that was slightly faster than her leg in the D1 race. Suffern's 3:46.15 winning time beat out Shen at 3:47.50, with Uniondale in 3rd. Sammy Watson got the baton in 7th for Rush-Henrietta and more than 5 1/2 seconds behind Suffern. Her 53.95 leg was the second fastest in the race and pulled the Comets up three places into 4th.
Rush-Henrietta and Suffern raced each other again at Nationals in the sprint medley relay, and the Comets won while the Mounties took 3rd, the same place they got in the 4x800m. Watson switched over to the 800m and won the national title, while McIntosh opted for the 400m and finished 4th.
Interview with Kamryn McIntosh of Suffern after she won the 800m individual championship.