Five Warrior girls medal at league track and field meet

Five of Fallbrook High School’s girls received medals for finishing in the top six at the Avocado West League track and field meet.

Junior Amanda Williams was second in the shot put. Junior Sarah Grantham finished fourth in both hurdles races. Senior Shavonne Donoghue placed fourth in the pole vault and was followed by sophomores Mikala Tidd and Taryn Ransbury.

The league meet was held at El Camino High School. Those with the top nine times or distances in each event during the May 7 preliminaries advanced to the May 10 finals. In the finals Williams threw the shot put 32’8”, trailing only the 37’0” of El Camino’s Kayleigh Helgesen.

The league meet does not affect team standings – Fallbrook finished dual meet competition with a 1-4 league record and a 2-5 overall mark – but qualifying for the CIF meet is based on league meet results. The top two finishers in each event at the league meet earn entry into the CIF preliminaries, and anybody with a time or distance which meets CIF standards also automatically qualifies for the CIF meet. The next best marks at the league meet are used to round out the CIF meet fields of 27 competitors in each event.

Freshman Hannah Niebel was Fallbrook’s only other girl to qualify automatically for the CIF meet; although her time of 11:43.88 placed 14th in the 3,200-meter run (which did not have preliminaries) it bettered the CIF standard of 11:44. “She got in just under the standard. It was quite a race for her,” said Fallbrook head coach Troy Hamlin. “There were numerous times when she could have fallen apart.”

Niebel’s time was also a personal record.

Grantham’s time of 16.98 seconds in the 100-meter hurdles earned her an at-large invitation to the CIF meet. “Fourth place in her first year of 100-meter hurdling in our league is pretty impressive,” Hamlin said.

The automatic standard was 16.60 seconds. “She was pretty disappointed,” Hamlin said. “She made one mistake towards the end.”

Grantham finished the 300-meter hurdles race in 49.10 seconds. The standard was 48.88 seconds, and she did not receive an at-large invitation.

Donoghue, Tidd, and Ransbury all cleared 8’9”; the tiebreaking criteria of fewer misses at lower heights was used to determine the final positions. All three received at-large berths into the CIF meet. “Curran (assistant coach Jim Curran is in charge of the pole vaulters) had a pretty good year with his girls,” Hamlin said.

Senior Kathryn Markham qualified for the league finals in the long jump and ended her high school career with an eighth-place distance of 14 feet 9 1/2 inches. “She had a good ending to her season,” Hamlin said.