Nylund fifth among D-III 300-meter hurdlers

Bonsall High School Senior Henrik Nylund closed out his high school track and field career with a fifth-place finish in the boys 300-meter hurdles race at the CIF Division III championship meet June 12 at Valley Center High School.

Nylund finished in 43.66 seconds, which set a personal record. "Henrik did great," said Bonsall High School Track and Field Coach Eric Hendy.

The Frontier Conference finals were held May 27 at The O'Farrell Charter School. The league meet champion automatically earned a berth at the CIF San Diego Section meet as did any runners or field athletes who posted a qualifying time or distance.

This year, Nylund and junior Ethan McFarland were Bonsall's only track and field athletes. An athlete is limited to four events in a single meet. McFarland's only event at the league championship meet was the 3,200-meter run; he finished fourth with a time of 10:26.01.

Nylund ran in four events. His time of 12.44 seconds in the 100-meter dash gave him eighth place. He completed the 200-meter dash in 26.09 seconds for sixth place.

Liberty Charter senior Timothy Bottenberg won the 100-meter hurdles with a time of 17.04 seconds while Nylund was second at 18.11 seconds. Nylund had the winning time of 44.52 seconds in the 300-meter hurdles and Bottenberg finished second with a 47.52-second performance.

Prior to this year, the CIF San Diego Section had two divisions for track and field. This year, the San Diego Section had three track and field divisions, and Bonsall was in Division III. The CIF Division III preliminaries were held June 5 at Valley Center High School. Nylund was in both hurdles races during the preliminaries.

His time of 17.92 seconds gave Nylund 10th place among the 100-meter hurdles preliminaries runners and did not advance him to the finals. Nylund completed the 300-meter hurdles race in 44.18 seconds for fourth place and a lane in the finals.

The 3,200-meter race was not contested in the preliminaries, so all runners who qualified in that event competed in the finals. That included McFarland.

"Ethan totally earned it. He spent a lot of time working on his own, training on his own during the off-season," Hendy said.

McFarland placed 14th in the finals with a time of 10:28.94. "I think he took it as inspiration to work even harder," Hendy said.

In terms of team points at the CIF meet, Bonsall shared 27th place with Mater Dei among Division III schools. "Just the whole meet was a great atmosphere, run super efficiently," Hendy said.

Each division champion qualified for the Open Championship Meet as did the athletes with the next six fastest times or longest distances from all divisions. Nylund was not invited to the Open Championship Meet. "He still ended on a positive note and was just happy to be out there," Hendy said.