Taft Runs Out of Gas : Toreadors Fade in Relay, Dorsey Wins Girls’ Title

VAN NUYS —  It was a scene that reflected the fortunes of the Taft High girls’ track and field team Thursday in the City Section championships at Birmingham High.

With 100 meters left in the 1,600 relay, Toreador freshman Deneeka Torrey had a 10-meter lead on Dorsey’s anchor runner, Jacqueline Jackson. But Torrey was spent after blasting the first 300 meters and Jackson passed her with 50 meters left.

Dorsey won in 3:52.73, with Taft second in 3:54.46, to cap the Dons’ third consecutive team title with a 79-71 victory over the Toreadors.

Westchester finished third with 41 points, Birmingham was fourth with 34 and Kennedy was fifth with 32.

“That’s appropriate that they won the relay since they beat us in the meet,” Taft Coach Mel Hein said of Dorsey. “I was proud of the way our kids performed, but they beat us. They just beat us.”

In the boys’ meet, Dorsey won its second title in a row and fourth in the last five years with a 66-point total.

Crenshaw finished second with 52 points with Taft and Birmingham tied for third at 26 and University fifth at 24.

In the girls’ meet, Taft junior Eboni Grayson won the 100 and 200 with school records of 12.00 and 24.42. She also ran the second leg on the 1,600 relay and on the 400 relay that won in a school-record time of 46.67.

“I’m so thrilled right now,” Grayson said after upsetting Janice Thomas of Dorsey in the 100. “Just to come out here and run and win is something else. We trained for this meet all week and the feeling is just overwhelming.”

Grayson won the 100 because she got out ahead of Thomas, but she overpowered her much taller rival in the final 40 meters of the 200.

“Eboni had an incredible day,” Hein said. “She just ran super.”

Grayson moved to ninth on the all-time region list in the 100 and 200 and Taft’s 400 relay moved to third behind two Kennedy teams that clocked 45.81 in 1980 and 46.37 in 1981.

Junior Frances Santin and freshman Jayda Bailey were Taft’s other leading scorers.

Santin ran the third leg on both relays, placed third in the 100 high hurdles in a personal best of 15.14 and clocked 45.88 in the 300 lows.

Santin, the defending champion in the 300 lows, led for the first half of the race but chopped her steps badly at the fifth of eight hurdles and faded to third.

Bailey ran the first leg on both relays and won the 800 in 2:19.14. Teammate Wendy Chan was third in 2:20.51.

Freshman Malinda Malone of Cleveland, sophomore Tiffany Burgess and junior Ika Eliashvili of Birmingham, freshman Jessica Cosby of Granada Hills and senior Jennifer Capehart of Kennedy were other individual winners from the region in the girls’ meet.

Malone was in fifth entering the homestretch of the 400, but she reeled in the four runners ahead of her in the final 70 meters, including senior teammate Stacey Harris with 15 meters left.

Malone’s school record of 55.85 crushed her personal best of 57.40, but she didn’t feel confident of winning with 100 meters left because Harris had a six- to seven-meter lead on her way to a 55.92 clocking.

Burgess won the 1,600 in a personal best of 5:08.80 after passing Melissa Peralta of South Gate with 40 meters left. Eliashvili bounded a school record of 37-5.

Cosby won the shotput at 43-2 3/4 and Capehart led Kennedy to a 1-2 finish in the pole vault when she and teammate Christine Merrell cleared 9-0 and 8-0, respectively.

The Taft boys were led by junior twins Larry and Lawrence Jones and Birmingham was paced by junior Demetrus Patterson.

Larry Jones went from fourth to first in the homestretch of the 400 to clock a personal best of 47.80 and Lawrence finished third in a career best of 48.12.

The 400 appeared to take a toll on them in the 200, however. Larry finished fifth in 22.25 and Lawrence was sixth in 22.42, but they rebounded to run the first and fourth legs on the Toreadors’ victorious 1,600 relay that timed a season best of 3:16.94.

Birmingham, which appeared to have an outside chance at winning its second City title and its first since 1992, got off to a bad start when the Braves’ 400 relay finished sixth in 42.28. But Patterson helped them recover by finishing second in the 100 with a time of 10.96 and second in the 200 with a personal best of 21.87.

Ali Benmohamed of Monroe and Jeremy Cunningham of Verdugo Hills were the other local winners in the boys’ meet.

Benmohamed, the 1996 City cross-country champion, won the 1,600 in 4:20.15 after holding off a furious kick by North Hollywood’s Paul Muite, who ran a personal best of 4:20.81.

Cunningham won the pole vault at 14-6 before missing three times at 15 feet.

The top three finishers in each event qualified for the state championships in Sacramento on June 6-7.