Fast Times and Classic Finish at Holmdel Twilight
Full Results | Photos by Ruben Rivera | Race VideosTeams took to the track at Holmdel's Bob Roggy Memorial Stadium on a cool Thursday night with some hot relay times in mind. The opening meet of the Holmdel Twilight Series would deliver on those goals producing three state leading times on the girls side and multiple New Jersey top ten performances all around.
One of the best races of the night came at the very end with the seeded section of the boys 4x800 meter relay. The barn burner of a race opened the first 1500 meters with a large yet swiftly moving pack before switching to a smaller lead group of teams fighting tooth and nail for the win.
Heading into the last leg it was a battle between Rancocas Valley and Westfield for first place. Little did either team know the eventual winner would come from way back in fifth to edge Westfield out at the line. That heroic anchor leg was thrown down by none other than Ocean Twp's state champion Elliot Gindi who split around a 1:53 to bring his team from behind to a meet record of 7:57.35. Ocean's first three legs featured Matt D'Auria, James Hoffman, and Tom D'Auria.
Westfield was second at 7.57.68 and six other teams went under 8:10 in that race including an 8:00.46 from Rancocas Valley and 8:00.96 from Colts Neck. This meet now makes up NJ#2 through NJ#9 in the 4x800 meter rankings.
On the girls side there were three NJ#1 performances recorded, and if our meet history is up to date all three of these times were meet records... In the girls 4x800 meter Shawnee ran an impressive early season time of 9:24.44... Union Catholic hurdled their way to a 1:00.40 in the 4x100 meter shuttle hurdle relay... And Summit went for a 48.93 in the 4x100 meter relay, they also ran a meet record NJ#2 time in the 4x400 meter with a time of 4:02.46.
The other boys events were won by Columbia 1:03.23 in the SHR and Perth Amboy who ran 3:30.26 in the 4x400 meter and 43.84 in the 4x100 meter relay.