Bayron, Vargas Set Westcliff Marks at Soka Indoors

By BRANDON PETERSEN

It was a sun-drenched afternoon Saturday at Soka University, where the Westcliff track team impressed at the Indoor Qualifiers.

Freshman Jalen Bayron set the Westcliff all-time mark in the 60M Dash, finishing with a time of 7.37 seconds.

"(Bayron) has been working extremely hard at practice," Westcliff head coach Justin Johnson said. "The crazy thing is he broke the record with a horrible race, so many things went wrong with the start to the finish. We have already identified them and will work on them this week."

Bayron is an extremely gifted athlete and despite running a rocky race, finished just four-tenths of a second from the first-place mark.

Unfortunately, Bayron won't get a chance at qualifying for the Indoor Championships as the rest of the Westcliff season will play out outdoors, however, he still has a chance at the postseason in the 100M and the 200M and has already shown the potential as a freshman to take down those Westcliff sprinting marks as well.

On the distance side, Kelvin Kiptoo shined once again, running an incredibly mature 3000M race in which he saved his energy to the last lap and kicked hard, turning in a mark of 9:06.65, good for second place overall.

"It was a good race, I was expecting much worse," Kiptoo said. "For the first four or five laps, I was just relaxing in the middle of the pack, comfortable with the pace."

Kiptoo has been burned at track meets in the past in which he would start a race at a blistering pace and his competitors would draft off that pace and take advantage of Kiptoo down the stretch.

On Saturday, Kiptoo flipped the script, saving his energy with the pack on laps averaging 1-minute, 12-seconds. On his final lap, Kiptoo turned in a 1:08.

"Today, I tried to use their pace, and it worked," Kiptoo said with a smile.

The Warriors' distance dynamo finished second overall coming off two weeks of inactivity in which he was sidelined with a high ankle strain.

"I am shocked that he actually ran that time," Johnson said. "At practice this week, we took it extremely slow with him and gradually got him back into the swing of things. We kept his mileage down leading up to the meet."

The strategy paid dividends, as Kiptoo looked every bit himself on the track Saturday.

Now that the Indoor season is over, Kiptoo will gear up to compete in the 5,000M in an extremely competitive Cal Pac field that prides itself on distance running.

On the Women's side, both Mikaiella Vargas and Shackera Samuels competed in the sprinting competitions and Vargas put in work at the shot put as well.

Vargas had quite the day, breaking the Westcliff school record in the shot put with a throw of 9.32 meters.

"To break the previous school record, she needed to PR and that's exactly what she did," Johnson said. "We will look to enter her into some other events to get her ready to compete in all events required for the Heptathlon."

Vargas and Samuels are both seniors whose development is catching up to their potential.

Samuels showed well in the sprints Saturday, finishing with a mark of 8.58 seconds in the 60M Dash and 28.96 seconds in the 200.

"We are working with Shackera to get her into race shape," Johnson said. "This upcoming meet, she will debut her 400M Hurdles. She has all the pieces to be successful, we just have to put them all together and have a complete race -- starts, running between the hurdles, hurdling, attacking the second curve, finishing strong off the final hurdle and finishing through the line.

"She'll be ready."

This Friday and Saturday, Westcliff will compete at the Cal State LA Invitational.

Friday's track events will be held in Walnut, and Saturday will be at the Jesse Owens Track in Los Angeles.

Throwing events will take place at Mt. Sac in Walnut.

To contact Brandon Petersen, e-mail brandonpetersen@westcliff.edu.