Track and Field: Threesome reach mountain top, almost

Tony Altobelli

CERRITOS - So much for that “glad to just finish in the top five”

thing for Newport Harbor High’s track and field threesome of Trevor

Jones, Amber Steen and Krista Dill.

The trio not only fared well enough at Friday’s CIF Southern Section

Masters Meet to qualify for next week’s State Preliminaries, but they did

so in rather convincing style.

The rest of the state will have to keep up with Jones in both the

110-meter high hurdles and the 300 intermediate hurdles.

In the intermediate hurdles, Jones became the first runner this year in

all of California to break 37 seconds (36.89). That time was also the

second-fastest in CIF history, just behind’s Keith Pontiflet of Esperanza

(36.74).

“I told him that if he felt good, he should go for it,” boys coach Bim

Barry said. “Needless to say, he felt rather good tonight.”

In the high hurdles, Jones was one-hundredth of a second off his personal

best with a winning time of 14.22.

The surprise of that race was the fact that Katella’s Kenny Vinh, who

defeated Jones at the CIF Division II championships last week, failed to

qualify with a sixth-place time of 14.61.

For Steen, all she did was break a 14-year-old school record in the

1,600, qualifying third with a 4:50.75 and surpassing Maggie Hanson 1986

mark of 4:53.02.

“What can I say?” girls coach Eric Tweit said. “She ran an awesome race.

The competition was tough and she had to run a time like that to

qualify.”

Steen, last year’s Masters Meet winner in the 3,200, qualified fourth

this year with a 10:52.32.

Dill took all the mystery out of whether or not she would qualify for the

discus throw with a first-throw mark of 137-4, good enough for third

place.

“Everything was perfect for her on that first throw,” Tweit said.

“Perhaps it was a blessing in disguise not to have qualified last week

for the shot put. That way she could concentrate on just one event.”

The boys’ 1,600 relay squad of Jones, John Peschelt, Richard Weber and

Dan Moyer, missed qualifying with a seventh-place time of 3:21.26.

The State prelims will take place Friday with the finals on Saturday,

both at Cerritos College.