Seniors shine in final home meet to lead Eagles; Brown, VanDorpe each earn pair of wins for Mater Dei, with Grover securing distance double for JSerra

By Landon Negri for DyeStat

All the races Blake Hennesay and Nikki Merritt continue winning apparently aren’t enough.

When it comes to the 300-meter hurdles, the two Santa Margarita CA seniors have their own competition going, with aim toward Orange County records.

And it might not last long. Both were spectacular Friday in leading the Eagles to standout performances in the Trinity League championship meet on their home track.

Merritt continued a torrid stretch that started with the league prelims meet last week. She won three events Friday and helped Santa Margarita’s 4x100 relay team to a win.

Hennesay won the 100 and 300 hurdles, lowering his own track record and setting a new league-meet record in the event.
Merritt won her fourth consecutive league championship in the 300 in 43.47 seconds. Hennesay won his 300 hurdles in 37.72. The Orange County records are 41.95 and 36.45, respectively.

“Actually, me and Nikki Merritt have a little race going on who can win it first,” Hennesay said. “That’s something our coach started really recently.”

By far, Hennesay had the stranger day. He won the 100 hurdles only to have the race called back due to a timing error that didn’t record a mark for any of the runners.

Finish-line photos did offer proof he won, and it was decided that everyone but Hennesay would have to re-run the race to decide the postseason berths. As the winner, his was automatic.

“Someone heard a gun 80 meters in – I didn’t hear it – and it sounded like a loud footstep or something,” he said. “So we get to the end and the time says ‘00,’ and I’m like, ‘Wow, I ran pretty fast.’”

The censor, he said, didn’t detect the gun, so he went through a frantic few minutes going back and forth mentally before admitting “I was angry,” during the 300.

“When I heard I had to run it again, I’m like, ‘all right, back to the 100 mindset,’” he said. “Then they tell me I don’t have to run it, so back to the 300 mindset.”

Things were far smoother for Merritt, who lit up the track at prelims in her three individual events. While a tough act to follow, her victories Friday in the 100 (11.93), 100 hurdles (14.05) and 300 hurdles (43.47) were convincing. She finished her Trinity League career as a four-time champion in both hurdles races.

She said she’ll plan to do all three events plus the 4x100 relay for as long as she can in the CIF-Southern Section postseason, which begins next week with Division 3 prelim races at Estancia High in Costa Mesa.

“It’s honestly been crazy,” she said. “Last week was just about the best week I could’ve hoped for, so this past week has been kind of surreal.”

There were plenty of multiple-event winners Friday. Santa Margarita senior Gwynn George earned the toughest of distance doubles with wins in the 800 (2:16.10) and 1,600 (5:06.32), before anchoring the Eagles’ winning 4x400 relay team (4:04.62).

George said she is likely to drop the 1,600 for the postseason.

JSerra sophomore Anthony Grover, the Division 4 state cross country champion, didn’t come in as the top seed in either the 1,600 or 3,200, but won both (4:16.48 and 9:27.85).

“Coming in, I hadn’t won too many big races (this track season), and I was still getting my training in,” Grover said, “So I knew if I stuck with the leaders, I’d have them at the end.”

Mater Dei senior Tommy Brown knows he won’t have much of postseason, as he’ll miss the CIF-Southern Section Masters meet and the state championship to leave early for the University of Alabama, where the four-star recruit will play football.

Brown has a different motivation. He is chasing the shot-put school record his father, Vince, set 40 years ago.

He won the shot (54-9) and discus (158-8) for the second consecutive year, and his personal-best this season is closing in on catching the mark of 61-3.75 set by Vince Brown in 1978.

It certainly has made it interesting around the dinner table.

“He talks smack,” Tommy Brown said, “So I want to take him out.

“He reminds me constantly that he doesn’t care what I do in football,” Brown added. “He has the shot put record and it’s a lot of smack.”

Mater Dei senior Sam VanDorpe was another double winner Friday in two rousing performances. First, he won the 800 in a personal-best 1:53.15, putting him No. 5 in the state exclusively in the event. He was tied with Roosevelt’s Jackson Taylor.

The mark also set track and league meet records.

Secondly, he ran the anchor leg of Mater Dei’s winning 4x400 relay team, which won in 3:20.41.

St. John Bosco’s 4x100-relay team of Level Price, Colby Bowman, Trevor McDuffie and Nathan Jones set a venue and league-meet record at 41.67. That marked the fourth time this week a California team broke 41.70, following state-leader Murrieta Mesa and Great Oak in the Southwestern League finals Wednesday and Harvard-Westlake on Thursday at the Mission League finals.

Price said the goal isn’t so much to chase times, but to keep getting better.

“It’s just to lower it each time we run,” he said. “Our goal is to get down to 41.2.”