Girls Win 6th Straight Union County Relay Title! Boys 4th!
Written by: Jim Lambert for MileSplit
Union Catholic showed that it just might be the best team in the state with a historic display of balance and depth as the Vikings piled up a mind-blowing meet record total of 138 points! That’s just 22 points away from a perfect score! UC did it by placing third or better in all 16 events! And the Vikings won seven events and dropped two NJ#1 times on the way to a 138-76 victory over runner-up Scotch Plains-Fanwood.
The former meet record for points was 129 by the Union Catholic girls in 2015.
UC, which won the pole vault, SMR and 400 hurdles on Thursday, added victories in the first three events on the track on Friday-the shuttle hurdles, the 4×800, and the 4×200 to put the meet away. UC’s seventh wins came in the field from its strong javelin crew.
There were several key contributors for the Vikings.
Avery Jordan ran on three winning relays, she led off the NJ#1 shuttles (1:01:11) with a 15.0, ran the third leg on the NJ#1 4×200 (1:41.99), and was a member of the wining 400 hurdle squad. Ajanae Thompson ran on the shuttles and anchored the 4×200. Kaleigh Gunsiorowski anchored the SMR and 4×800 to victories with strong carries. In the field, Jada Mia Puryear had the top throws of the meet in both the shot put (NJ# 2 40-8.50) and discus (118-8) and Daniela Peralta had the top throw of the meet in the javelin (107-5), and cleared 8-0 on the winning pole vault team. Versatile stars Alexandra Bonn and A’Liyah Thomas also had very strong performances. Bonn ran on the shuttles, and had the top TJ performance (35-10) of the meet, and was on the runner-up high jump and long jumps teams. Thomas anchored the shuttles, and was on the LJ, TJ and HJ teams that all placed second.
The UC boys dropped the first big bomb of the meet by hammering out a 10:23.92 in the DMR, that’s No. 2 all-time in meet history, No. 1 in NJ this season, and No. 11 in the U.S. Junior Myles Plummer led off with a 3:04.9 carry to open a big gap, and junior Shane Brosnan closed it out with a 4:18.1 anchor. They will be back to run the 4×1,600 on Friday.
