Evanston’s track team scored a clean sweep of all 5 relay races Friday night and cruised to its 8th consecutive championship at the Dan Phillips Relays indoor invitational.
Veteran head coach Don Michelin stacked the deck as usual in the relay races that count for double points in the team standings, and Malachi Adams added an individual victory in the 55-meter dash as the Kits piled up 80 points and ran away from the rest of the 10-team field at the ETHS fieldhouse.
Following the hosts in order in the team standings were New Trier (38.5 points), Morgan Park (34), Thornton (28), Loyola Academy (24), Whitney Young (21), Bloom (20), Zion-Benton (12),Waukegan (10) and Leo (6.5).
“The relays are double points, so it only makes sense to do that,” Michelin said. “We did that by design, and I thought our guys performed well. You’ve got to stretch and use all of your people to win a meet like this.”
Sophomore Brad Garron, who got a late start due to his involvement with the sophomore basketball squad, showed that he may be able to catch up to the rest of the talented ETHS sprint corps sooner rather than later. He ran the leadoff leg in the only frosh-soph event on the meet schedule, the 800-meter relay, and came back with an eye-opening 1-lap leg of 18.58 seconds in the varsity sprint medley.
Garron combined with Brian Daniels, Miles Hampton and freshman Lucas Suycott in the frosh-soph race for a winning time of 1 minute, 37.65 seconds, and teamed with Carl Klamm, Garfield Wellington and Bret Lowry to rule the sprint medley in 3:38.1, almost eight seconds faster than runnerup Bloom.
“We wanted to top load that sprint medley so it wouldn’t be so hard on Lowry on the anchor leg,” Michelin pointed out. “And we put Brad in that frosh-soph race because we thought we could steal 12 points there, too. Looking at it long-term now, how do I not put Brad on that 4 x 400 relay team outdoors? Can he get in good enough shape to run the (open) 200 and then be able to come back and give us a 50 flat or so on the relay? We’ll see what happens.”
Evanston opened the track portion of the invite with a rare victory in the 3200 relay as the foursome of Ryan Christie, Trinton Jones, Lowry and Klamm breezed to a first place time of 8:21.55.
Also scoring relay wins were Adams, Reggie Murphy, Roland Amarteifio and Marcus Starks, 1:35.44 in the 800 relay, and the unit of Christie, Jones, Amarteifio and Klamm in the 1600 in 3:32.11.
Adams scored his first win of the indoor campaign when he edged teammate Murphy 6.74 to 6.75 in the 55 dash. Also contributing top individual finishes were Amarteifio, 3rd (7.62) in the 60 low hurdles and 2nd (7.65) in the 55 high hurdles; Babajide Bamgbose, 2nd (7.60) in the 60 lows and 3rd (8.00) in the 55 highs; Colin Watson, 3rd (20 feet even) in the long jump; Jonathan Wilburn, 3rd (41-11.75) in the triple jump; and Jonathan Connerly-Bey, 4th (44-9) in the shot put.
Evanston will host the Central Suburban League South invitational meet next Friday at 5 p.m.
Source: ETHS Sports Information