High school track and field: Woodall carrying on Brush hurdles tradition, wins at Mentor Cardinal Relays
By Chris Lillstrung, The News-Herald
Brush’s Quentin Woodall wins 110-meter hurdles April 29 during the Mentor Cardinal Relays.
Brush had to wait a little longer than everyone else for its buses to arrive April 29 after the Mentor Cardinal Relays.
Among those likely indifferent to such bumps in the road, though, is Quentin Woodall — because the only bus he’s concerned with is the one heading to Columbus in about a month.
At Mentor in his signature event, Woodall hoped he added mileage to that quest to carry on an Arcs’ recent tradition for which he had a first-hand view.
The Brush junior won 110-meter hurdles with a time of 15.03 seconds, the area’s second-best time in the event thus far in 2017 behind Lake Catholic stalwart Connor Duricky (14.40).
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“It was cool,” Woodall said. “Honestly, I’m kind of out of it right now — I’ve got a cold, and I actually went out there and didn’t think I was going to win, because I thought my cold was going to stop me from doing well. But I got the job done.
“It felt good. I got out of the blocks really fast. Everybody was complimenting me on where my acceleration was, and that was cool. My acceleration has always been good.”
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The list of Division I state qualifiers for the Arcs in boys hurdles since 1991 is exclusive — Ronnell Thompson (2009, 110 hurdles) and Jai Dixon (2015 and 2016, 300 hurdles).
Woodall was a D-I regional qualifier last spring as a sophomore in 110s and 300s and is forthright in his belief he learned a lot from Dixon, the longtime program staple who was an adept sprinter in addition to his hurdling acumen.
“That was good, because I actually didn’t have a lot of confidence last year,” Woodall said. “My brother Jai Dixon ran it last year and made it to state in 300s. He kind of helped me, and when I went to regional, I thought I was going to come back and be the man this year.”
On the girls side, the host Cardinals were in their usual strong form, recording 12 top threes to win the team title with 117 points.
Rachel Wenzel earned MVP honors for the second straight week after also doing so for field events at the Ranger Relays, turning in the best high jump (5-2) and long jump (16-2) as Mentor won both relays.
“I think our younger girls are starting to improve on a weekly basis,” Cardinals coach Bob Berwald said. “They’re starting to come into their own, and it’s going to help us in the postseason as well, going into the (GCC) meet — the league meet is really tough this year with Medina and Strongsville, who we haven’t even seen this year other than the first meet of the year. We haven’t really seen them at full strength, and obviously Solon is always going to put together a good program.
“So having the depth and the confidence with the younger girls is going to help us out a lot.”
The Perry girls had a busy weekend, rolling to Harvey’s Dick Beeler Booster Invitational title on April 28 and returning less than 24 hours later for a solid team runner-up at Mentor.
Brooke Sutyak led the Pirates to a win in pole vault relay, clearing an individual-best 10 feet, and ran a leg on first-place 4x1 (52.01). Leah King easily captured 300 hurdles (47.83), was second in 100 hurdles (15.74) to Brush standout Jasmyn Allen (15.09) and also ran a leg on 4x1.
Both Perry staples had a hectic slate at Beeler. Sutyak swept sprints, cleared 10-0 in pole vault and was on the winning 4x1, and King swept hurdles and was on the first-place 4x1 and 4x4.
“I definitely stayed mentally strong,” King said. “I knew that I had to stay focused for this. I did pretty good yesterday. I had to keep everything together for today, and overall, I think I did pretty good today.
“We did so amazing yesterday. I’m so proud of everyone. Today, coming in with these big schools and having a lot less people, we did pretty good placing-wise and being tired — everyone is obviously tired from last night, then getting up. But we still did really good.”
Unsurprisingly taking suspense off the table early, Beachwood’s Leah Roter broke the area 3,200 record for the second straight weekend, going 10:42.83 to better her area standard set last week at Ranger Relays by more than three seconds.
Given her current trajectory, it’s no shock and is likely to be a reoccurrence through May and June as Roter takes 3,200 to places never before seen locally.
Full audio interviews with Woodall, King and Berwald >>
Full top-three results >>