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Girls Track: Leyden seeks personal bests in sectional meet
Leyden's Patrycia Gumkowski competes in the 3200-meter run at the Leyden Invitational girls track meet. | James C. Svehla~for Sun-Times Media
Updated: June 4, 2012 11:02AM
Coach Brent Dempsey has a very specific goal in mind for the Leyden girls track team when the Eagles hosts the West Suburban Conference Gold Division meet at 4:30 p.m. Friday at West Leyden.
Dempsey doesn’t expect the Eagles to be able to keep stride, for the most part, with top teams Downers Grove South and Hinsdale South. But his goal for the Eagles doesn’t require winning events.
“I’m looking to see everyone have (personal bests),” he said. “I want us to do as well as we can, and then we’ll see how it pans out from there. Scoring is going to be tough because there are some very good teams in our conference. But we’ll be able to gauge how well we did by our times and improvement.”
Leyden has had some good individual and relay performances this season without, in some cases, a first-place finish to show for the effort. However, the Eagles finished on top Friday in the eight-team Ridgewood Invitational.
The Eagles scored 167 points to win, followed by Latin (138), Trinity (93), Regina (76), Nazareth (67), Elmwood Park (59.5), Ridgewood (44.5) and CICS-Ellison (1).
Kaitlyn Marquette and Jesica Leon took the two top spots in the shot put, respectively, with throws of 29 feet, 7 inches and 29-4.
Additional first-place finishes by the Eagles came from Angela Paczynski in the 100-meter high hurdles (17.4), Christa Pitts in the 800 (2:33.3), Alex Kijowska in the 400 (1:01.7), and the 1600 relay of Kijowska, Pitts, Stephanie Dominguez and Alyssa Aiello (4:17.3).
The 400 relay of Kijowska, Taylor Calderon, Alyssa Aiello and Ashley Cortez placed second (52.7) as did Dominguez in the 300 hurdles (:53.1) and Cheyenne Salazar in the 200 dash (:28.3).
“It was definitely nice to see some success and win a meet like this,” Dempsey said. “We’re a young team, and the kids have been working hard. They have very good attitudes.”
