Field athletes strong at invitational

The Douglas High track & field team had only a handful of competitors at the High Desert Invitational in Reno over the weekend.

The majority of the Tiger runners got a week off in preparation for this week's Northern 4A Regional trials at Damonte Ranch.

"We only brought our jumpers," Douglas coach Jim Abbott said. "We'd had so many meets in a row, we wanted to make sure our runners, especially our distance runners, got a chance to rest their legs up for this week and the next couple of weeks."

Even with the truncated lineup, a number of individual performances stood out at the meet, most notably in the pole vault.

Douglas swept both the boys' and girls' pole titles as Nick Maestretti won the boys' event with a vault of 14 feet and Amanda Brazeau won the girls' event with a jump of 10 feet, 6 inches.

Craig Stratton was second in the boys' pole vault with a jump of 13-6 and Justin Seyfried was fifth at 12 feet. Jesse Cruz finished 10th at 10 feet.

"All of our pole vaulters either equalled or set new personal bests," Abbott said. "All of the jumpers did much the same. We're getting closer to where we want to be."

Shawnee McFadden took ninth in the girls' pole vault with a jump of 7 feet.

Other top performances for Douglas included Holly Downer taking third in the girls' high jump with a leap of 5 feet, followed by Shannon Sturgess in fourth at 4-10. Senior Jourdan Burke was eighth at 4-6.

Corbin Zumpft was fourth in the boys' high jump at 5-8, Garrett Tenney took eighth in the discus with a throw of 123-2.5 and Justin Dry took 10th with a toss of 121-02.

Downer also took third in the long jump with a leap of 15-6 while Kelsie Martinez was seventh at 15-2.

Aspen Abbott took seventh in the triple jump at 31-5.5.

The boys' 4x200 relay team of Cole Melhuis, Corbin Zumpft, Sean Derbyshire and Dylan Nielsen took fifth with a time of 1:36.91. The girls' 4x200 relay team of Shannon Sturgess, Holly Downer, Kelsie Martinez and Susie White took fifth with a time of 1:50.68.