Sansone, Bennett, Wildcat 4×100 Team Qualify for State 5A Track Finals

BATON ROUGE — Five Central High School athletes have qualified for the State 5A Track Championships at the LSU Bernie Moore Track this coming Saturday. They won the right to compete as a result of winning 1st, 2nd, or 3rd Place in the Region II 5A Championship this past Thursday at the Catholic High track.

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Overall, Central High finished in 4th Place in the regional championships — out of the 20 teams who scored points.  Catholic High was 1st with 136, Dutchtown 2nd at 70, East Ascension 3rd with 63, and Central 4th with 44.33.  Walker High was 5th at 28.50.  Zachary was 7th with 26 points, and Denham Springs was 20th with 2 points.

State 5A 100-meter champion Trevor Sansone of Central finished second in the Regional Championship behind D’Andre Jacobs of East Ascension.  Sansone beat Jacobs for the State Championship last spring.  In the regionals, both runners were hampered by a head wind and finished far behind their best times.  Jacobs was 1st at 10.97, and Sansone was 2nd at 11.16.  The 3rd Place finisher, Landon Collins of Dutchtown, had 11.19.

Central made another strong showing in the 4×100 meters, winning 2nd Place and qualifying for the State Championship with a time of 42.52.  East Ascension was 1st with 41.51. The Central team consisted of Lamonte Juneau, Gary Triplett, Trevor Sansone, and Leroy Williams.

Sprinters from Region II are among the strongest in the state, and another dual between Jacobs and Sansone in the 100 meters is expected on Saturday.

Jacobs also won the 200-meter dash, while Sansone and Central’s Gary Triplett failed to qualify for the state finals in that event.  Triplett was 5th in the regional at 22.83, while Sansome was 6th with 22.95.  It took a time of 22.2 to qualify.

Triplett ran a very strong final leg in the 4×200 and made up a lot of ground on the competition.  Central finished that race in 5th place at 1:29.26 and missed qualifying by .32 seconds.

The Wildcats’ best performance in the regionals was by Akil Bennett, who won the long jump with 22-11-3/4.  He qualified for the State Championship.

Bennett also earned 3rd Place in the triple jump, with leaps totaling 45-04-1/2.  That will put him in the State Finals in that event as well.

Bennett was 5th in the 110-meter high hurdles with a time of 15.67, but did not qualify for the state meet in that event.

Central’s Craig Jones narrowly missed qualifying for state in the long jump.  He was 4th with a leap of 21-10-1/2.

The Wildcats’ Thomas Woodward high jumped 5-11, which would have been good enough to qualify for state but he ended up in 5th Place, because he had more misses at that height than the 3rd and 4th Place finishers.

Blake Welborn of Central threw the discus 141-03 and finished 6th in the regional.  It would have taken 152-05 to make it to 3rd Place and the state finals.

Central’s girls did not score points in the regional competition.

PHOTO: Lamonte Juneau hands off to Trever Sansone

Story and photos by Woody Jenkins, Editor