Baker, Moody run at New Balance Outdoor Nationals
Several local track and field athletes took part in the New Balance Outdoor Nationals June 19-22 at Philadelphia's famed Franklin Field.
Cape junior Jason Baker placed 34th in the 2-mile, setting a school record of 9:14.51 despite 85-degree heat and coming within one-hundredth of a second of his 3,200-meter personal best in the process.
Sussex Tech junior Jordan Welch finished 11th in the long jump with a leap of 22-feet-11.75-inches, missing the finals by just 2 inches.
Ryan Moody, a junior from Sussex Academy, took 104th in the mile with a 4:21.60 clocking.
Paige Ballinger, a Milford native and former Sussex Academy standout now competing for Padua, placed third in the freshmen mile with a personal-best time of 5:00.41. She also led off for the Pandas' 4-by-800-meter relay squad, which took fifth in 9:03.08.
Other top finishers from the First State included Middletown's boys' 4-by-100-meter relay, which crossed third in a state-record time of 41.17, and Tatnall's Max Martire, whose 196-foot-11-inch heave earned him a close second place in the discus.
The meet was a good example of what a pre-race Baker termed "trackflation," as it featured a bevy of national records, all-time top-10 marks in nearly every event, and dozens of meet records.
But two names stood out as potential future Olympians. The first was Natalie Dumas from Eastern Regional in Voorhees, N.J. The 11th-grader pulled off an unprecedented triple by winning the 400-meter hurdles (55.99), 400 meters (51.14) and 800 meters (2:00.11). Dumas set meet records and posted top-eight all-time marks in all three disciplines, setting New Jersey state records in the 400 and 800. She added a 2:03 800-meter leg in the sprint medley relay for good measure, helping her team take second.
The second world-beater was Camryn Dailey, a Raleigh, N.C. seventh-grader who set a world age-group record in the 100 meters (11.39) and missed her own record in the 200 (22.92) by the slimmest of margins. The middle-school sensation has also run an Olympic-level 51.67 for 400 meters.
