After winning a South Puget Sound League North Division title and a district crown, the Kent-Meridian boys track & field team hit a wall during the Class 4A state meet.
The Royals, who took second at state a year ago and came into the meet at Mount Tahoma High with trophy expectations, suffered a litany of setbacks en route to a 21st overall finish with 10 total points.
K-M did finish highest among the four Kent School District programs (Kentwood took 28th with 8 points, Kentlake finished 55th with five points while Kentridge did not place), but the end result wasn’t what was anticipated. Mead rolled to the team title with 82.5 points followed well in the distance by Skyline at 38.
“The wheels kind of came undone,” lamented K-M coach Ernie Ammons.
The wheels literally came undone for star Derrick Daigre, the Class 4A defending state champion in the 800-meter dash. Daigre strained a hamstring competing in the preliminary round of the 4 x 400 relay on Thursday, the first day of the meet. He fought through the pain and still managed to qualify for the finals in the 800, and bring home an eighth-place finish with a time of 2:01.87, which is nearly eight seconds off his pace.
“It was severely strained,” Ammons said. “Basically, it was a pain threshold. The doctors told him the more he ran on it, the more it was going to hurt.”
Kent-Meridian’s biggest blow, however, came before the meet began as standout Brandon Harris, one of the state’s elite jumpers and part of K-M’s relay teams, violated a school policy and was suspended from competition. Harris likely would have finished among the state’s top four in both the triple jump and long jump.
“It set the tone coming in and snowballed from there,” Ammons said. “But despite not having Brandon there, we should have been a top-four team.”
All said, K-M wasn’t without its highlights. In fact, the Royals brought home nine overall medals, which is two more than last year. Leading the way was freshman phenom Abu Kamera and senior Nick Lemmon. Kamera was the Royals highest placer, taking fifth in the 110 hurdles with a time of 15.42 seconds. Lemmon, a three-sport standout at K-M, brought home a sixth-place finish in the pole vault after uncorking a mark of 13-feet-6 inches.
The top individual male performance among all four Kent schools, however, belonged to Kentwood’s Tim Pettit in the 800. Pettit, who has been one of the state’s most consistent runners the last two years, took second in the event, clocking a time of 1:54.89. Justin Zimmerman of Ferris won the event (1:54.27).
ALSO: Kentlake’s Alex Straus was the highest Falcon placer, taking eighth in the high jump (6-4). … Kent-Meridian’s 4 x 100 relay team (Andrew Smith, Prescott Jackson, BJ Arceneaux and David Jones) added an eighth-place finish with a time of 47.32. That same group clocked a 42.76 in the prelims, which would have scored a fourth-place finish. The Royals added an eighth-place finish in the 4 x 400 (Jackson, Smith, Jones and Jordan Thompson-Walker) with a time of 3:35.56.
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