Metts, Murray advance to CIF section finals

The Division I athletes with the top nine times or distances in each event at the CIF San Diego Section track and field preliminaries meet, May 19, at Mount Carmel High School advanced to the CIF section finals, May 26, at Mount Carmel, and two of those athletes were Fallbrook High School competitors.

Erin Murray advanced to the girls 400-meter finals, and Caiden Metts fared well enough in the boys’ long jump to advance to the section finals.

“They performed well,” Fallbrook head coach Marco Arias said. “I was very proud of them.”

Murray had a preliminaries time of 59.03 seconds to place seventh among Division I girls and 12th among all girls in that event. The sophomore improved her time in the finals to 58.78, which placed sixth among Division I girls and ninth overall.

“It was a good mark, puts her into a really good spot for next year,” Arias said.

During the preliminaries Metts, a junior, had a distance of 21 feet 2 inches which was the sixth-longest distance among Division I boys and ranked 16th overall. He improved that to 21-8 1/4 in the finals, which gave him sixth place in Division I and 13th place for both divisions combined.

“He has just started scratching the surface,” Arias said.

Three of Fallbrook’s field athletes competed in the preliminaries but did not advance to the finals. A throw of 44 feet 4 inches in the shot put gave junior Darius Watson 12th place among Division I boys. Siena Allen threw the discus 91-7 to give the junior 20th place among Division I girls. The 21st-place Division I girl in the long jump was freshman Jade Kennedy, who had a distance of 14 feet 5 and one-half inches.