On Friday 18, 2022, College of the Sequoias Track and Field participated in the Sunbird invitational at Fresno Pacific University, where the Giants had some trouble getting on the board. They won no events in throwing and running during the meet.

Although no COS students won an event on Friday, there were several top five finishes. Considering the competition that COS had to play against, it wasn’t all that bad.

Several of the schools who were in attendance for this meet were Division 1 programs like CSU Bakersfield, Fresno State, along with smaller four year programs like CSU Stanislaus and the host school, Fresno Pacific University.

In spite of this heavy competition, the following top five finishers had a valiant effort in to obtain the following times:

For the men’s top 5 finishers, Derrick Jones in the 100m sprint with a time of 11.09 seconds (4th), Justyce Kahuanahana with a time of 15.64 seconds in the 110m hurdles (4th), Cameron Austin finishing at 1:03.33 in the 400m hurdles (5th), Nicholas Reid throwing the Javelin for 45.56 meters (5th), and Alberto Nunez, jumping 1.68m in the high jump.

On the flipside for the women’s top 5 finishers, Gisel Barajas in the 400m dash at 1:08.51 minutes (3rd), Riley Beeman with 1:19:19 minutes in the women’s 400m hurdles (3rd).

To add onto the women’s placements, there were two women who had more than one top 5 finish, the first of which being thrower Alyssa Logan in the Discus (4th, 40.04), hammer throw (3rd, 42.33), and the shot put (2nd, 10.46m), and the second is long distance runner Aslin Taylor in both the 1500m (4th, 5:01.33) and the 3000m (4th, 10:52.57).

For runner Aslin Taylor, she put on quite a show in her 1500m event, “When I run I start out going really fast and tend to fall back,” said Taylor.

Her ability to keep a sustainable pace without falling back in her 1500m made for a spectacle. Although, her 3000m showed her tendency to “rabbit”, in which she led for the first 2 laps of the race and fell to fourth as the race went on.

Probably the most important part of the running side of this meet were the sprinters, specifically both the 100m and the 400m. During the 100m sprints, assistant coach Bruce Lyons expressed the importance of those races for the future of the team.

“These 100’s are going to answer a lot of questions that we’ve had about the 4×100’s. You know this is track and field, the coaches don’t decide [what place the runners run],” said Bruce Lyons.

According to Kenny Jackson, the head coach of Track and Field, those questions aren’t going to be a problem for the team moving forward.

“I don’t think there’s any questions to be asked about the 4×100, we are right where we need to be for our second meet, especially because relays require team chemistry, and there is no substitute for running together,” said Head Coach Jackson.

While there may not be any questions for the head coach about the 4×100, Head coach Jackson brought up there may be some questions about the mentality his runners are showing up with at meets.

“Where we need to improve at as a team is not being intimidated with program prestige, because we’re going to run at the Stanford invitational, we’re going to run at San Francisco State, we’re going to run at Stanislaus, so we can’t be intimidated when we run against schools like Fresno State or Cal Poly,” said Head Coach Jackson.

Head coach Jackson added, “Track is a different type of sport in Junior College, it’s a sport where you can compete against pros if you’re running good enough, and since we were running good enough, we just can’t get spooked by them.”

Even though program prestige might have played a factor in some disappointing results, it was still a great day overall for COS at such a large event.

“The kids did their jobs,” said Bruce Lyons.

COS Track and Field has just started their long season, with no home meets in sight, you can get all the news and updates right here on the COS Campus Journal, as well as all other sports and school news!