Palo girls Palo girls (May 11, 2005)run away with title

by Keith Peters

Paul Jones knows better than to worry about having a container of Gatorade dumped on his head.

"I'm too quick for that," joked Jones, head coach of the Palo Alto girls' track and field team. "I get to a place where they can't reach me."

Jones should have been doused last week after his girls' team capped a perfect season by winning the SCVAL De Anza Division championship meet at Los Altos High.

Jones, however, remained dry following the final 1,600 relay that put the finishing touches on Paly's 161 points and first overall division title since 1993. The Vikings won 10 straight leading up to and including '93, then hit a dry spell until last Thursday.

With all but 32.5 points returning next season, Jones and his fellow coaches may be looking at the start of another streak.

"We'd like it," Jones said.

What Jones really liked out of the meet was the fact 17 different girls scored points for the Vikings.

"Everybody was right on top of their game," he said. "We had a bunch of season bests and a lot more pretty close to them. It (the team effort) definitely came together at the right time."

After winning the dual-meet season with a 6-0 mark, Jones said it would have taken numerous mistakes by the Paly girls for them not to win the league meet and, with it, the overall title.

That, however, didn't happen. The Vikings made that clear from the very start as they sped to a school record of 49.05 to win the opening 400 relay. Ranecia Fields, Katy Wanner, Katrina Zawojski and Alyson Seedman comprised the team. Only Zawojski is a senior.

When sophomore Renata Cummins ran a personal record of 5:07.06 to upset Gunn senior Tori Tyler to win the 1,600 meters, the Paly onslaught was under way.

Junior Elissa Chandler followed with a 16.03 victory in the 100 hurdles, and freshman Mia Lattanzi leaned at the finish to win the 400 in 57.61 over Los Altos sophomore Bria Nelson by a mere 0.03 of a second.

Wanner, a junior, sped to victory in the 100 meters in 12.93 (with Seeman fourth and Fields seventh) and junior Meghan Przybyla (46.99) and Chandler (47.77) both ran personal records while finishing second and third, respectively, in the 300 hurdles.

By the time Zawojski (25.74) and Seedman (26.35) went 1-3 in the 200, the team trophy was all Paly's.

Tyler, who has no peer in the Central Coast Section in the 3,200 meters, ran away from the field to win that race in a meet record of 10:49.50. Tyler actually lapped numerous runners on her way to winning her first league title in that event. Cummins was second in 11:37.64.

The Paly girls scored enough points in the running events (106) to beat runnerup Los Gatos (95) without scoring a single point in the field events.

Zawojski, however, finished off her standout effort by winning the long jump (16-9 3/4) and triple jump (36-0 1/2) to give her 32.5 points on the day.

"There's no question she's a great athlete," Jones said, "but we have a lot of others who are close."

Wanner is one. She finished second in the triple jump 35-4, second in the high jump (5-0) while Fields was runnerup in the long jump at 15-11 1/2.

In the boys' meet, Palo Alto finished third with 86 points and Gunn came home seventh with 23.

Paly seniors Herrel Siller Jr. and Pierre Meloty-Kapella were both double winners. Siller Jr. won the 1,600 in a PR of 4:27.84 and doubled back with a win in the 800 in 2:01.77. Meloty-Kapella won the 100 in 11.23 and added a victory in the 200 in 22.47, both personal records.

Gunn's Chris Yu won the long jump at 21-9 and teammate Derrick Brooks added a leap of 42-3 1/2 for third in the triple jump.

The top 16 times and marks from the De Anza and El Camino league meets now advance to Saturday's SCVAL Qualifier at Los Gatos High. From there, the top qualifiers move on to the CCS semifinals May 21 at San Jose City College, site of the CCS championships on May 27.

The top three finishers (and those achieving automatic standards) from the section finals will compete in the CIF State Meet on June 3-4 at Hughes Stadium in Sacramento.

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