Girard’s Brown long jump champion

Division II Regional Track Meet

Gallery

By BRIAN DZENIS

bdzenis@vindy.com

AUSTINTOWN

Somehow Jalaya Brown found another foot and a regional title.

The Girard sophomore entered the postseason with a personal best in the long jump of 16 feet, three inches, a mark that projected her to be the second-best in her district.

Brown set a new personal-best for the second time in eight days — 17-05.75 — on Saturday at the Division II regional track and field meet at Austintown Fitch. She moved on to next weekend’s OHSAA State Track and Field Championships with gold medals at both the district and regional levels.

“I don’t know what it is. At these meets I’ve been nervous, but it was just consistency,” Brown said. “I have an amazing coach and she helped me out a lot,” Brown said. “I’m very surprised. I’ve never jumped 17 feet [before districts].”

Brown is Girard’s lone female athlete heading to state. On the boys side, Nick Malito and Daryl Smith advanced in the 100-meter dash and shot put, respectively. Besides Brown, Salem’s Caitlyn Marx in the discus and South Range’s Jordan Lowery in the shot put were the only area regional champs on Saturday.

Poland’s girls 4x400 relay found a way to shave five seconds off their best time to clinch a state bid. By the time Mia Musolino passed the baton to anchor Chloe Kosco, the Bulldogs were in sixth place. Kosco passed three runners on the final lap to take third place with a time of 4 minutes, 2.66 seconds.

“I just kept it positive in my head. I was really pushing on that last 200 and gave it everything I had,” Kosco said. “I’m really proud of how we ran today.”

The Poland girls also had a 4x200 relay qualify with a second-place finish and Kosco took fourth in the long jump.

It was a bittersweet day for East. All six of the program’s male athletes are heading to Columbus and the girls 4x100 and 4x200 relays clinched a bid as did senior Kyndia Matlock in the 100 and 200, but Saturday was marred by an earlier injury.

Senior sprinter Jahniya Bowers’ hamstring injury in Thursday’s preliminary 100 race proved to be too much to overcome. She ran in the 100 as a sendoff before being scratched from her remaining events.

“I still wanted to run. I felt like if I didn’t, I would have regretted it, so I did it,” Bowers said. “I tried, I did everything I could. It was bittersweet and I did everything I had to do.”

Bowers had a good chance of delivering the Youngstown City Schools’ first track state title since 1978. Entering the postseason, the Youngstown State commit was ranked No. 2 in the state for the 100 and No. 3 in the 200 in Division II. As the anchor in the 4x100, East was ranked No. 2.

All isn’t lost for the Golden Bears girls. Matlock is a Division I commit to Youngstown State and on Saturday, she ran a personal-best 11.76 that was a tenth of a second behind first-place Azsah Bradley of Ravenna. In the 200, she was third in a tight race behind Bradley and Akron St. Vincent-St. Mary’s Kya Epps. Less than half a second separated the three runners.

“I don’t really think about it. I’m just focusing on my race,” Matlock said of a potential rematch in Columbus. “They were good athletes, that’s for sure.”

Struthers sophomore Aiden Hall took second in the 400 for his first state bid in his first season of track. He just wanted the extra conditioning for football season, but got much more.

“It feels really good to come out and do something like that on my first try with all these kids that have been running in it for a while,” Hall said.

“I picked up the 400 during the season as an endurance thing and I ended up being good at it.”