Schools
WREC's Deron Smith Takes Gold in 100-Meter Dash in City Track Championship Meet
West Roxbury finished eighth in the team standings.
With the week-long rain finally relenting on Friday afternoon, Deron Smith got to compete in the event he had been waiting for all week: The 100-meter dash in the City Championship track meet at White Stadium.
“I’ve wanted to run it since Monday,” the West Roxbury Education Complex senior said of the meet originally scheduled for last Monday and Tuesday, but postponed every day until Friday. “I was anxious. I couldn’t even train because of the rain; I couldn’t put in as much work as I wanted to.”
None of that seemed to matter once he finally hit the track. After running the fastest preliminary time in a personal record (11.1 seconds), Smith shattered that mark by clocking a 10.9 in the finals to take the gold medal.
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“I really wanted it,” he said. “That’s why I got it. My mind was set that nobody was going to beat me because I really wanted it.”
Coming into the event Smith was tied for the top seed time with Seth Philsten of Brighton High. Philsten logged a 11.2 in to finish second in the prelims and an 11.1 in the finals, finishing second once again.
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Smith got a second place finish of his own in the long jump with a leap of 20-feet-6-inches. He lost by inch to East Boston’s Davonte Holloway. Smith came into the event with the second best leap of 19-07.
West Roxbury, which finished eighth in the team standings (23 points), also got a fourth-place finish from Ernst Sanon in the 400-meter hurdles. Sanon ran the race in 1:03.5.
On the girls’ side, Westie was sixth overall (28 points) in the team standings thanks to Shaelyn Grant’s gold medal performance in the 400-meter hurdles. She smoked the rest of the field by clocking a time of 1:12, which was 12 seconds faster than her nearest opponent. She shaved three seconds off her seed time too.
Elizabeth Lewis finished fourth in the 400-meters (1:08.4) while Aisha Virgo logged a 31.5 to place eighth in the 200-meter dash.
As for Smith, he still can’t take his eye off the forecast just yet. He qualified to run in the state meet this week.
“From last week on I was watching the weather report,” he said, noting the city championships probably could've gotten off on a few of those days. “We could’ve run in the fog.”
But he didn’t seem to mind Friday’s sunshine.
“It’s a nice day, I think they picked a good day,” he said. “Well god picked the day, god picked a good day.”