Jackson boys top the field at Ocean Relays
BY MIKE WHITE
Staff Writer

LITTLE SILVER — The Jackson High School boys indoor track team rallied in the final two events of the night to outdistance a scrappy Toms River North squad to win the Ocean County Relays last Saturday at Red Bank Regional high School.

Trailing TRN by three points with just two races left, the Jags needed to finish ahead of the Mariners in both the distance medley and the 4x400 events.

The Jags did just that.

Jackson placed second in the distance medley while TRN was third, and then the Jags won the 4x400 to collect a total of 52 points to claim the title.

"Placing ahead of them in the distance medley relay was key," Jackson coach Jason Griffith said. "That is their bread-and-butter event. Once we did that, we felt confident that we could finish them off in the 400."

TRN finished runner-up with 49 points. Toms River East was third (36), followed by Central Regional (32) and Manchester (30).

"It was a total team effort," Griffith said. "We did a great job at the end of the meet, but if we didn’t get the performances we got from every single runner out there, we could not have won. You can’t single out any one performance or race as the one that put us over the top."

The team of Kyle Nagy, Jason Staggers, Jean Blardony and Paul Bahamondes won the 4x400 in a time of 3:39.94.

Nagy was a late addition to the team. He replaced Eric Dufresne shortly before race time.

"We have a lot of depth on this team," Griffith said. "We have six or seven guys we rotate in these events. We feel confident in all of our runners."

In the 4x200, the squad of Nagy, Vadim Menzorov, Chris Grossett and Dufresne finished first in 1:37.78.

"We were kind of expecting to win that event," Griffith said. "I thought we ran a solid race. Each one of those runners had great times."

Menzorov was out last week nursing a hamstring injury. He still isn’t 100 percent, Griffith said.

"He is close to it, but he’s still not there," Griffith said. "We were holding him back a little at this meet. But the leg is getting better each day. We didn’t want to overuse him at this meet and take a chance of re-injuring it."

Bahamondes, Kevin Summers, Staggers and Blardony combined to place second in the 4x800 in a time of 8:32.44.

The Jags were third in the sprint medley relay. Joe Arneth, Grossett, Dufresne and Blardony posted a time of 3:56.59.

Jackson was fifth in the shot put. Joe Reggio and Jevgenij Spikalov combined for a toss of 87-5.5.

Jackson competed at the Eastern States Tuesday and is scheduled for the Meet of Champions at Princeton this weekend.

"It should be an interesting week," Griffith said. "We’re competing well at this point in the season."