ACC track team travels to nationals

HUTCHINSON — Allen Community College’s track team will finish its season at the NJCAA National Championships today. The meet started on Thursday and many of Allen’s athletes have already competed.
Coach Vince DeGrado said a few notable runners — Pedro Montoya and Trail Spears — have been training for their event since January. Montoya was ranked second and Spears was ranked seventh heading into the 10,000-meter run.
“Anything can happen at the 10k at nationals,” DeGrado said. “It can start slow, it could go out fast. Sometimes, it just depends. With those two, we didn’t run them at regionals. I held them out to train for this. They’re ready for whatever.”
DeGrado sat the pair about a month ago because they already qualified for the national meet, and he wanted them to be fresh for the biggest event of the season. DeGrado also explained that with the low numbers, and the way he was going to set up the regional events, their absence wasn’t going to be the difference between the team finishing first.
The boys finished fourth and the women finished sixth in the Jayhawk East Conference. Each ACC team was competing against six other teams. Instead of having athletes compete in multiple events  had everyone just compete in his or her primary event.
“Our numbers weren’t there, so I didn’t load the events up like I have normally in the past,” DeGrado said. “Had it been a bigger team, I would have.”
Montoya and Spears ran the 10,000-meter race on Thursday night. Montoya finished in eighth with a time of 32 minutes, 37.24 seconds, and Spears finished in ninth at 33:06.52.

ONE OF Allen’s best relay teams — the men’s 4x800m team — ran its event on Friday, after The Register went to press. The foursome of Thomas Broxterman, Meshach Adams, Markeen Caine and Aaron Miller were ranked fifth going into the event. Only two seconds separated them from the top-ranked team in the country.
Their biggest accomplishment of the season so far had been breaking ACC’s school record in the event. They finished in 7:38.21 to win the Jayhawk East Conference.
“That was the first time I’ve actually had a team finish under 7:40,” DeGrado said. “I’ve had a bunch of 7:42s and 7:43s, but never sub-7:40. On the way to regionals, I said we might have chance to break 7:40 by the time we got to nationals. They went and did it that day [at the regional]. It was a great race.”

HUNTER KOIKE was ranked seventh in junior colleges in the decathlon. The top 16 advance to the finals and DeGrado has liked Koike’s season thus far. As of press time, Koike was in fifth through six events with four more on the way. Ben Najman, Jayhawk Conference champion, made it to nationals for the 1500m run. For the 800m run, Adams, Caine and Broxterman will each compete today.

FOR THE WOMEN, Alondriah Brown made it to nationals in the 100m dash and 200m dash. Tieasha Collier made it for the long jump and 400m run. Andrika Dawn tied for the conference championship in the high jump, which she will be competing in at nationals.
“I don’t think I’ve had a girl win the high jump since I’ve been here,” DeGrado said. “She is the first.”
Nationals competition concludes today.