Chris Gooding outleans Shawn Hasten at the line. Photo by Danny Duncan
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The track season is now underway for many schools in the Sarasota/Brandenton Metro area. Lemon Bay High School hosted a 1A-2A varsity invitational that knocked off the cob webs with some very exciting races. The home team Mantas were victorious for boys and girls overall, and the Braden River girls and Southeast boys took second place, respectively.
The boys 1600 meters was a great race between Lemon Bay's Chris Gooding and Mariner's Shawn Hasten. Gooding led the majority of the race until Hasten took over with 400 to go. Gooding sprinted with everything he had and won by 0.07 -- 4:43.46 to 4:43.53.
"Shawn passed me with 400m to go," Gooding said after the race, "I stayed calm and told myself I would I would pass him on the back stretch. I attempted to pass him but I couldn't get around him by the turn. I knew it wasn't a good move to pass him on the turn but I knew that was my only shot. I put in an all out surge and got in front of him with 150 meters and we sprinted to the end and I outleaned him... It was a great race!"
Lemon Bay's Haley Blem and Daniella Do Valle had an incredible intra-team battle. Blem led the race until about 250 meters to go, around the turn she picked up steam and left everyone behind. Everyone but her teammate Do Valle, that is. The two battled it out to a final kick and with the crowd on the edge of their seats, Blem held on to win by just 0.34 with a time of 2:36.75.
The boys 800 meters was taken under control fast by Lemon Bay's Nick Tieu. From the start Tieu led, looking very strong and determined. With 500 meters in Tieu was passed by Shawn Hasten of Mariner and had a big gap put on him. Then with 250 to go he struck back and kicked big to win by almost 3 seconds.
After the race Tieu said he said he was pleased with the effort, especially given how new he is to the event. "I wasn't sure how I was going to do going into the 800 since I'd only ran it once before indoor. I went out hard and at the start of the second lap when I got passed I realized I had to go. I tucked in behind him and waited until about 250 to go and I gave everything I had to kick it in. I couldn't believe how ran," Tieu laughed, "It felt good to win though."