Meanwhile, senior Hafeez Soberu takes home a gold and a silver while setting seasonal records.
A surprising 2nd place finish in the 4×100-meter relay coupled with 4 personal records (PR) and 3 seasonal records (SR) powered the HT Girls Track team to a second place finish at the Chicago Prep Conference (CPC) Outdoor Championship Meet hosted by CICS Northtown on Saturday, May 5.
Freshman Ariana Nelson was the missing piece that enabled the girls to put together a relay squad for the first time in recent memory. Despite limited practice, the Lady Tigers (Moshay Turner ’20, Mellanie Barnes ’18, Ariana and Abiola Salimon ’18) moved the baton around the track and defeated several conference foes that had been working together all season.
For the HT Lady Tigers, the excitement was just getting started. Abiola jumped out to a big lead in the 100 meter high hurdles and set a new PR. She followed up her hurdle gold with another first plfirst-place(13.06, SR) in the 100-meter sprint; Moshay (13.20, PR) closely trailed finishing second. Continuing the team’s sprint and middle distance dominance, Mellanie took the gold in the 800-meter event, running away from the field after the first lap of the race. Moshay captured gold in her signature event, the 400-meter sprint, finishing more than 30 meters ahead of the pack. Mellanie returned to crush the field in the 1600-meter run (6:32.50, PR) taking control after 200 meters. Abiola was not finished as she captured her third gold medal of the day with a strong performance in the 300-meter intermediate hurdles. Moshay (28.09, PR) and Ariana (32.10) closed out the scoring for the Lady Tigers with second and fourth place finishes in the 200-meter sprint. The 92 points scored by the HT runners left them one short of capturing their second CPC title.
On the Boys’ side, Hafeez Soberu ’18 took the gold in the 100-meter sprint (11.40, SR) and missed the gold in the 200-meter sprint (23.45, SR), finishing second in a photo finish that took the timing down to four decimal places before a winner could be determined.
