Indoor track: A year after being eliminated on last throw, Negrete gets Millrose Games spot
NEW YORK — When Prizila Negrete left the 2022 Millrose Trials she was both very disappointed and physically hurt.
With the top three finishers qualifying for one of track and field’s most prestigious meets, Negrete, competing with an injured rotator cuff that would subsequently require rest, then specific weight training as rehab, was knocked from third to fourth place on a competitor’s final throw.
Negrete’s top throw was 34-10, more than three feet off hat she'd thrown less than a week earlier.
“It wasn’t the greatest performance,” she recalled.
“I was just devastated,” she said.
But Wednesday night at The Armory, the Ursuline senior, who’ll join her pole vaulter brother, Miguel, next year on Bucknell’s track and field team, put the past in the past.
Seeded first in a field of 27 with a personal-best 45-5, Negrete broke that mark in the prelims with a throw of 46-9. Then she topped that by a hair, throwing 46-9.25 in the final to win the championship by nearly a foot and earn her slot at the 115th annual Millrose Games, which will be held Feb. 11 at The Armory.
Grinning, she recalled last year she’d left The Armory with qualifying in 2023 on her bucket list.
But she did more than just qualify Wednesday.
Negrete’s throw moved her to No. 8 in the country this season among female high school weight throwers.
“It’s been a whole turnaround this season,” she said.
Somers' Googel also qualifies in throw
Negrete will have some Section 1 throwing company at the Millrose Games.
Lafayette-bound Somers senior Jared Googel grabbed the third and final qualifying spot in the boys weight throw with a 54-2.25 effort.
“It’s absolutely incredible,” said Googel, who remarked he was happy to follow in the footsteps of former Somers/now-Binghamton University thrower Brian Luciano, who qualified for Millrose last year, then finished fifth at the Games.
Googel held off Horace Greeley’s Daniel Ye, who recorded a personal-best 53-6 for fourth place in the 21-thrower field.
“It came down to the last throw,” Googel said. “He was inching closer and closer. He was ramping up. He had incredible throws.”
Syosset’s Parker Kim won Wednesday’s competition at 65-5.75 and Francis Lewis’s Brandon Pau was second at 59.7.5.
Relay qualifiers
While not taking the top spots, both Suffern’s 4x400 boys and girls relay teams left The Armory knowing they’d return to run again at the Millrose Games.
With six teams in total qualifying in both the boys and girls 4x400 suburban relays out of multiple heats, Suffern grabbed the fourth spot in both the boys and girls relays.
“Awesome,” is how coach Jeff Dempsey described that.
Both his boys and girls 4x400s would have run at last year’s Millrose Games but a snowstorm kept Suffern home.
Dempsey came into the meet confident his girls team would make the cut but he didn't have the same confidence about his boys
“I thought they’d run quick but it’s a pleasant surprise. I thought they’d be on the outside looking in,” he said.
The local area will be well-represented in both the boys and girls 4x400.
Also qualifying in the boys division was Newburgh Free Academy, which finished second to New Jersey’s Deptford Township (3:27.82-3:28.44).
Bronxville ran 3:30.08 for third place overall. Suffern’s time was 3:32.29 and fifth place went to Washingtonville in 3:32.66.
New Jersey’s Timber Creek won the girls title in 4:01.76 with Winslow Township just edging Bronxville for second, 4:08.41-4:08.84.
Suffern ran 4:08.87 with Scarsdale right behind in fifth, 4:08.92.
Ursuline just missed getting the sixth spot to qualify. It ran 4:09.78 but that was .03 slower than New Jersey’s Westfield High.
Dicker sets Bronxville school record
The height wasn’t enough to qualify but Bronxville senior Max Dicker, who only began pole vaulting in the spring of his sophomore season, won the boys championship, breaking Bronxville’s school record at 13 feet, 7 inches.
Dicker, who was looking for something also challenging but more fun when he made the switch from rowing to track specifically for pole vault, had previously cleared 13-6.
Dicker, who trains at the famed Barn in Warwick, initially cleared 10 feet in competition. Now, he hopes to clear 14 feet to qualify for nationals and also hopes to pole vault in college.
“This is so much more fun,” he said, comparing his former and current sports.
Suffern’s Todd Korman (12-1) was third.
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Other strong finishes
While not getting the single qualifying spot in the boys 55-meter sprint (that went to York Early College’s Jose Davis Whittaker in a personal-best 6.43), two Hudson Valley runners finished in the top five of the 72-runner event.
James O’Neill’s Jadon Spain clocked 6.44 for third and Iona Prep’s Marcus Nahim was fourth in 6.48.
Nahim, who’ll run for Binghamton next year and is having a terrific final senior season that has included winning the Hispanic Games 55 in 6.44 to break a three-decade-old Iona Prep record, said he thought his start in the prelims Wednesday had been a “little lackluster” and he’d felt “way better” in the final.
“But these are pretty good competitors,” said Nahim, who has already qualified to compete in the highest division at Nike Indoor Nationals.
The local area placed four runners in the top half of the boys 39-runner invitational mile.
Delbarton (NJ) High School’s Collin Boler won in 4:14.98.
Nyack’s Matt Schutzbank (4:23.04) was fifth, Ketcham’s Connor Hitt (personal-best 4:24.39) was sixth, Arlington’s Ethan Green (4:25.65) was 10th and Horace Greeley’s Mason Barlow (PB 4:29.97) was 17th.
Another New Jersey athlete, Kent Place’s Lindsay Hausman, took the 27-runner girls invitational mile in 4:56.36.
Local schools placed two runners in the top 10 with Ketcham’s Abigail Kowalczyk clocking a personal-best 5:02.96 for fourth and Tappan Zee’s Sofia Fenton grabbing the 10th spot in 5:11.08.
Horace Greeley ran 1:33.86 for fourth out of 10 teams in the boys 4x200 relay.
Both Mount Vernon (1:51.14) and Rye (1:53.33) ran season-best times in the girls 4x200.
Nanuet's Gabriella Vizcarrondo recorded a personal-best 42-5.5 for fourth in the girls weight throw, Ketcham's Hailey Hrouda was seventh (40-0) and Ketcham's Angie Odeniyi (PB 38-9.75) was ninth.
Bronxville (8:21.01), Newburgh (8:25.37) and Iona Prep (8:34.55) ran season-best times in the boys 4x800 invitational relay.
Tappan Zee (9:50.48), Scarsdale (9:53.83) and Bronxville (9:56.72) also ran season-best times in the girls invitational 4x800 relay.
Nancy Haggerty covers cross-country, track & field, field hockey, skiing, ice hockey, basketball, girls lacrosse and other sporting events for The Journal News/lohud. Follow her on Twitter at both @HaggertyNancy and at @LoHudHockey.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Indoor track: Ursuline's Negrete, Somers' Googel head to Millrose Games
