Thursday's Mustang Invitational at Northside Christian in St. Petersburg saw a slew of exciting finishes and fast times across the board. The event last year was cancelled on the same day that literally the entire sports world and world, in general, came to a screeching halt due to the coronavirus pandemic, so it was a real celebration of the return to some normalcy with the sport that we all love and missed in 2020.
Let's showcase some of the best races that we witnessed from the meet.
Girls 400 - Erica Roberts Stuns Tytiana Wilson For The Home Crowd
Admiral Farragut's Tytiana Wilson came into the meet as the heavy favorite to win the girls 400 as the top seed by 3 seconds and eyeing potentially a time closer to sub 56 seconds. Coming off the final turn, it appeared she was on her way to a resounding win and season-best time.
However, Northside Christian's Erica Roberts spoiled those plans and shrunk the gap from second to first place quickly to nip Wilson at the line chopping 3 seconds off her season-best and please the home crowd with a 56.82 PR victory. It was arguably the biggest upset of the meet.
Boys 1600 - Mateo Luna Lays It All Out On Track In 4:23 PR
Girls 100 - Super Soph Sophie Haag Runs Away From Field in 12.14 PR
Boys 400 - Elijah Gant Leaves No Doubt In Dominant 49.10 Victory
One of the few double winners on the track for the meet was Lennard senior Elijah Gant including a 49.10 personal best performance in the 400-meter dash, which was one of the more dominant race winners of the night at the Mustang Invite. Gant made up the stagger on the rest of the field by the 150-meter mark and only poured it on from there winning by nearly a full two seconds over his next closest competitor.
Gant later came back to soundly defeat the boys' 200 meter dash field as well in a 22.10 clocking.
Boys 3200 - 8 Laps To Be Separated By Only 5 Tenths Between William Stone & Kirin Karver
It is crazy to think that the longest race at the meet in the 3200-meter run might have had the closest finish and took the entire eight laps around to decide a winner.
Osceola junior William Stone never relinquished first place for the entire race getting the advantage at the front going into the first turn off the start line. But neither did Berkeley Prep sophomore Kirin Karver relinquish his spot tucked in right off the hip of Stone for the entire race.
The two runners seriously negatively split the race dropping the rest of the field as they went from a 4:53 first 1600 meters to drop a 4:44-4:45 split for the last 1600 meters. Stone withstood one last push from Karver on the final stretch though to hold onto the win in 9:38.48 as the sophomore Karver's consolation was a six-second PR improvement to 9:39.01.