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Dolak, Williams win multiple events for Fitch to open season
By Brian Dzenis
AUSTINTOWN
The track and field team at Austintown Fitch has enough depth that it can afford to sit some of its stars out and still handily win a meet.
That was the case Tuesday evening as the team won its season debut. The Falcons finished with 115 points in the boys competition. Lakeside was the runner up with 44 points and Warren Harding had 15.
The girls team won just as decisively, earning 125.5 points. Harding had 22.5 and Lakeside had 21.5.
While the meet was technically the regular-season opener, it was given the preseason treatment by Harding and Fitch.
“It was a good meet for us. We use the Tuesday meets for training purposes and trying to get kids ready for later in the season,” Fitch boys coach Seth Steiner said. “We have to get them used to running multiple events, which they’ll have to do once they get to the tournaments.”
With temperatures starting out in the low 50s and dropping into the 40s as it got dark outside, the two teams elected to sit anyone dealing with a nagging injury.
Fitch sat out returning state qualifiers Eva Rivera and Khala Cameron, who were part of the 4x100 relay team went to Columbus. Kelly Hoffman, another member of that squad, is done for the year after tearing her ACL in the preseason.
Harding sat two-time regional finalist Riley Brown, a long jumper.
In the boys side, the teams had their full complement of athletes, but were still given the kid gloves treatment. For example, the boys high jump was called early after Fitch’s Jakari Lumsden and Deondre McKeever were the only athletes left competing. McKeever won the two-man competition with a jump of 6-1.
Fitch distance runner Lauren Dolak won the mile and two mile and was on the winning 4x800 and 4x400 teams.
“I was just trying to tempo it instead of racing it,” the junior said. “Saturday meets are when you want to run the fast times.”
Senior Brent Fairbanks took the discus and shot put in the field competitions, throwing 153-9 and 46.8, respectively.
“Today was a little slow, it was a pretty cold day, so the performances weren’t all there,” Fairbanks said. “There were some nerves from it being the first meet.”
Tuesday marked the varsity debut for freshman Alina Williams, who took the 100, 200 and 400-meter dash.
“We have some high expectations for her. She’s a national caliber athlete,” Fitch girls coach Bob Lope said. “She made national indoors as a freshman, which is not easy to qualify for.”
The event winners for Warren Harding were few and far between. Theran Hargrove took the 400 with a time of 53.9 seconds. In the girls competition, Kiyvetta Carmichael won the 800.
Harding coach Charles Perry wasn’t discouraged by what he saw on Tuesday. He took the same attitude toward the meet as his Fitch counterparts.
“Today was all about collecting data, to be honest with you,” Harding coach Charles Perry said. “We wanted to come to this meet and run our kids in a few of our events and see where we’re at currently in our conditioning levels.
“We have so many new kids in our track program that we just had no times on them, so we needed to see what we have.”