By Eric Butler
MaxPreps.com
Track & Field: Williams Wins Jumping Battle
Had the annual Wildcat Relays in Clovis gone off as originally scheduled, all the participants would have gotten was a bunch of snow and wind. But, rescheduled to sunny Saturday after a semi-wintry Friday night, the prep track & field event featuring several teams with state title hopes gave some major hopes to the winners.
Alamogordo won the boys team competition by outdistancing second-place La Cueva, Highland and host Clovis in that order. La Cueva's girls, however, took a convincing overall victory over Rio Rancho and Clovis - the second and third-place finishers.
Before a single running event took place, one of the top boys duels took place at the high jump. Rio Rancho's Marcus Williams set a new school record by jumping 6-feet, 11-inches to edge Clovis' Manuel Robles, who would win the long jump and triple jump at the meet.
Each competitor had missed the first two attempts at 6-9 when Robles cleared the height. Williams not only matched that, he also made his first attempt at 6-11. The previous Rio Rancho school record in the high jump was held by Williams' older brother Chris - now a wide receiver at New Mexico State.
"I'm calling him to tell him right now," Marcus Williams said after the victory.
Saturday was full of challenges for Williams.
Like many, Williams was presented with a dilemma when organizers - over weather concerns which ultimately came to fruition - decided to move the Friday night event to Saturday. Williams was scheduled to take ACT college entrance examination on Saturday morning.
The solution? Williams took the four-hour test at Clovis High and then went over to the track to face some stiff competition in the high jump from Robles.
"It was long and hard. I tried to focus on the test, but there were a lot of questions and only a little bit of time," said Williams of his first challenge of the day. "You sit there, and think you're doing good, and they say you have five minutes left - and you still have 35 questions to go."
At a recent dual-meet in Albuquerque, Alamogordo and La Cueva each won its respective half of the event without actually going against each other head-to-head.
Corey De La Cruz of Alamogordo, after winning the 400-meter run, said his team was glad to get that kind of chance against La Cueva on Saturday.
"Our whole team was looking forward to it, especially after last year's defeat at state," said De La Cruz, who was on the Class 5A runner-up Tigers' squad last year, to La Cueva.
In taking the girls team championship in Clovis, La Cueva got seven individual victories from three athletes. Alex Darling won the 100-meter hurdles, the 400-dash and the long jump and, to boot, finished off the meet by running the anchor leg in the 1600-relay and making up a 20-yard deficit when she got the baton to lead the Bears to the win.
La Cueva teammate Asal Salehpoor, nursing a hurt elbow, didn't participate in her usual throwing events but raced to victory in the 100-meter dash and jumped to first in the triple-jump.
"I felt pretty good. I've never felt faster, I guess you could say," said Salehpoor, a senior who finished her day by taking fourth in the 200-dash. "It was exhausting, but I got my personal best time. It was the first time I'd run my two(-hundred) since my freshman year."
Laura Lavezo of La Cueva added to the Bears' winnings by finishing first in the 1600 and 3200 meter runs.
Though the Bears won by 20 points, Darling was quick not to read too much into it.
"It's a good chance to see what's out there. You can be happy now, but state is totally different - you never know," Darling said.
Tennis: Cooper Takes APS Boys Title
If he's familiar with the movie, Cibola senior David Diaz might have identified quite well with one of the famous lines from "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" on Saturday. Because, as Diaz well knew, it was a case of "Who is this guy?" in the finals of the APS tennis tournament.
But there were actually a couple of good explanations as to why the eighth-seeded Cougars' player defied conventional logic by advancing all the way to the championship - where he lost 6-1, 6-4 in the boys singles final to Academy's Andy Cooper.
The first was the weather.
Rainouts on Thursday and Friday at the Academy courts, where the tournament was mostly held, meant that three rounds were hastily scheduled for Saturday. That had an adverse effect on La Cueva's Cody Hall, a junior who planned on taking the ACT college entrance examination on the same day.
Knowing he would be unable to play all three rounds, Hall - Diaz' opponent in the quarterfinals - decided to withdraw from the tournament allowing the Cibola player to move into the semifinals without so much as hitting a warmup ball. Hall, the two-time defending Class 5A state champ has rarely been seriously challenged by fellow 5A players the last three years.
"I kind of did want to play him. It's kind of bad to win like that, but I'll take it," Diaz said. "I think anyone would have taken it."
Diaz then did beat West Mesa's Justin Romero 6-3, 6-4 in the semifinals. As the fourth-seed, Romero's loss would also be technically considered an upset, but Diaz an injury he sustained in the summer may have had something to do with his eighth-seed.
"This was the first time I've played him this year. We played a couple of times last year," said Diaz, who won both of those encounters. "The thing with the seeding is that, in August of last year, I injured my right wrist and I haven't been playing any USTA tournaments - and they kind of were basing seedings off USTA rankings."
In the finals, Diaz' run ended at the hands of second-seeded Cooper - the Class 4A boys singles state champ in 2005.
"He's a great player, really tough," said Diaz, who recognized how strange it may have been for some onlookers to see him in the final. "I bet they were wondering what I was doing there, why Cody Hall wasn't in there. It's the best I've ever done and I was grateful to be in the final."