Track Teams Dominate at State Qualifiers
Track Teams Dominate at State Qualifiers
Franklinville-Ellicottville Boys and Girls Track Teams Competed Hard at the Section VI State Qualifiers
Photos / Rich Rumfola, ellicottvilleNOW
Before Franklinville’s Tyyetta Herman could get ready for her prom last Saturday night, she had some business to take care of on the track at the Section VI State Qualifier meet at West Seneca West High School.
Having completely dominated her competition with first-place finishes in all three of her events (the 100, 200 and 400 meter dash races) in the blazing heat of the preliminary rounds on Friday afternoon, the incredibly speedy runner found herself the favorite to once again sweep the so-called speed events in the finals on Saturday.
After a second straight day of overwhelming strength and flat-out speed, Herman proved herself to be the undisputed “Queen of Speeds” in Western New York for 2023, as the junior sprinter left all the other girls looking at her back as she crossed the finish line as the Section VI Champion and State Meet qualifier in all three events - and with only a few hours to spare before the big dance!
“It’s really rewarding to see that the work that I put in actually gave me the results that I desired from the start of the season,” Herman said of her big day. It was a sentiment that was echoed strongly by her mother (also named Tyyetta), a former high school track standout herself, and also the Titans’ girls team coach. “Not only does she spend the time working hard in practice,” Coach Herman explained, “She spends the extra time in the weight room working out and puts in the work after school to get better in academics.”
For the state qualifier meet, athletes were divided into two divisions (large school, small school), where the winner of each event moved on to the NY State Championships, to be held June 9-10 at Middletown High School in southeastern New York.
Herman’s dominant performance in the finals began with a razor-slim victory in the 100m dash, as she broke the tape with a time of 12.45 seconds, edging out Cheektowaga’s Amiya Verse by just five hundredths of a second (12.50) with a strong lean at the finish line.
In her next finals appearance of the day, the 400m dash, Herman made the most of her opportunity to repeat in the event she had won in 2022. The greatest distance of any of the “speed” events in track, the 400m dash requires athletes to sprint out of the blocks at the starter’s pistol and continue full-out the entire way around the 1/4-mile oval to the finish line.
Her decisive victory in last season’s 400m dash, also at West Senior High, propelled her into her first outdoor State Meet, where she ultimately finished with the 6th-best time.
Immediately after she had crossed the finish line with a blistering-fast mark of 57.43 seconds in this year’s qualifiers, many observers knew that Herman had posted an impressive time, but her second win of the day became a little sweeter when news spread through the crowd that she had broken the nine-year-old track record by six tenths of a second!
When asked which of her three State Qualifying events might be her favorite, Herman explained her affinity toward the 200m dash - the last event of her day. “I like the 200 because I’m always the most nervous for the 400 - it’s a big event - it’s also a hard event,” she admitted. “And then the (200m dash) just feels like a reward at the end of the meet to finish off with what I have left.”
Herman completed the speed runner’s trifecta about an hour after winning the 400m dash; as she ‘rewarded’ herself with another first-place finish - claiming victory in the 200m dash with a time of 25.17 seconds.
With her starting blocks in hand and having mowed down the competition one event at a time, Herman walked off the track and admitted with a smile, “Now all I’ve got to do is get ready for the prom!”
TITANS GIRLS TEAM FINISHES STRONG AT STATE QUALIFIERS
The Titans’ girls team closed out an impressive 2023 campaign with a second-place finish in the rain-soaked Cattaraugus-Chatauqua Athletic Association league championships at Falconer May 19-20 and became the three-peat champions of Section VI Class D with a dominant team showing at Randolph one week later.
As a team, the girls took sixth place in the small schools division at the state qualifiers last weekend at West Senior High.
Other standout performances from last weekend’s State Qualifiers include the throwing tandem of sophomore Elizabeth Price and senior Megan Jackson. The girls finished one behind the other in the discus, where Price’s fifth-place throw of 101-11” was two short inches further out than Jackson’s sixth-place toss of 101-9”. The following day in the shot put, Jackson took home fifth place with a toss of 33-3 1/2”, while Price’s throw of 31-2” was good enough for 11th place.
In one of the more demanding events in the sport, senior hurdler Anna Slavinski finished seventh in the 400m hurdles with a time of 1:12.30 and also brought home a top-15 time in the 100m high hurdles. In her first season competing in the pentathlon, junior Abby Chudy finished in 4th place in the discipline that includes the high jump, long jump, shot put, 100m hurdles and 800m run.
Senior distance specialist Alysa Williams finished in 8th place in the 2,000m steeplechase and took home a top-15 finish in the 800m run with a time of 2:35.73.
TITANS BOYS BRING HOME SOLID RESULTS FROM WEST SENIOR HIGH
Hot on the heels of a fifth-place team finish at the Class D Championships at Randolph on Friday, May 25, the Titans Boys Track team was paced at the State Qualifiers by freshman distance runner Grant Cornell, who scored a top-five finish in the 3,000m steeplechase with a time of 10:32.28. Cornell pushed through the 90-plus degree heat during the final event of a very long day on Friday in West Seneca to earn a top-12 finish in the 3,200m run with a time 11:06.64
Sophomore pentathlete Ben Edwards took fourth place overall in the five-event competition, his score was helped by a second-place finish in the 110m high hurdles (17.27 seconds). One of the best all-around athletes on the boys squad, Edwards also finished fourth in the 1,500m run (4:45.03) and claimed two more top-five finishes in the jumping events (high jump 1.6m and long jump, 5.36m).
During the preliminary heats on Friday, sophomore hurdler Maddox Johnson finished the 400m hurdle event in 1:03.23, just a touch over one second behind the time that would have gotten him into the finals on Saturday.
Senior discus thrower Dominic Breton brought home a top-15 finish from the State Qualifiers with a toss of 110’-5”.