It was obvious from the moment the gun went off that Jackie Drouin was on a mission and like the post office, she delivered. In an amazing performance, Drouin went under 5:00 for the 1600 in cold, windy conditions to win in a runaway. Her mark broke the old mark of 5:09.9 set by Kathleen Turchin in 2003.
Not to be outdone, her teammate Nathan Frasier used a tremendous finish to overtake Billy Mateker in the final lap to claim the men\'s 1600m championship. Mateker had a good 20m lead on Frasier going into the first turn of the last lap. Frasier put on a tremendous kick down the back straight away to overtake Mateker at the line and win the title.
In other action, Israel Machovec had a huge day on the track winning the discus in an impressive 174'9" and followed that up by breaking a 19 year old county record in the shot put with his 59'6.5" effort. Teammate Michael Butler added critical team points as he finished 2nd in the shot put with a 48'4" effort. Sister Eve Machovec also had a big day winning both the shot put and the discus, while squeezing in a 7th place effort in the triple jump to mark the 1st time in my memory that a shot put and discus thrower ever scored in the triple jump! Nicole Okolo provided big points for Collins Hill as she won the long jump and the triple jump while posting the top qualifying time in the 100m hurdles as well as running a strong leg on the number one qualifying team in the 4x100. Daniel Averso, drew a crowd at the high jump pit and won the meet with a clearance of 6'8.25" inches while just missing at a height of 6'10.25" in an attempt to set a new county record. The pole vault saw two county meet records broken as Cameron Cheek, of Mill Creek, soared an impressive 15'9" to take top honors. Meanwhile Annalise Peters, of GACS, broke the year old mark set by Erica Penk while clearing an impressive 11'6". Action will resume on Monday with the finals in the running events taking place. In total, 69 elite perfromances were posted on Saturday. Should be a great finals on Monday if the weather will cooperate.