SD Prep Sports

SD Prep Sports: Track & Field

Brown captures Western Regional heptathlon title

Tri-City Christian athlete qualifies for Junior Olympics

San Diego Multi-Event champion Sarah Brown captured the heptathlon title at the Western Regionals in Los Angeles on July 9-10. Brown, who just missed setting a new San Diego Multi-Event heptathlon points record in competition in mid-June at Cuyamaca College, finished ahead of favorite Kiani Profit, who had seemed to have a lock on everything in which she had competed for years.

Brown now moves on to the Junior Olympic national championships in Indianapolis, Indiana, to compete in the hepathlon.

Ironically, Brown started the Western Regionals on a poor note. She got a bad start in the 100 hurdles and Profit took a quick lead much to the delight of her rather robust cheering section and held an early 171-point on the San Diego champion. But Brown came back in the high jump to set a personal best by jumping 5-4 to outscore Profit by 171 points to create a tie after two of the seven events.

The other girls in the field began to quickly fall behind. The third event was the shot put, which was the only event that Brown had really been able to practice on. Brown improved by six feet in three weeks to outscore Profit by 18 points. The 200-meter dash was the last event of the first day. Profit had the advantage of an outside lane with less wind to run into, while Brown was in the second lane running straight into the wind. The end result was that Profit outscored Brown by 99 points to hold an 86-point lead heading into the second day. Profit’s total score after four events was 2,721 while Brown’s total stood at 2,645.

The second day featured Brown’s best event: the long jump. Brown jumped 17-1 –not a personal best but enough to outscore Profit by 114 points to take the lead for the first time. Brown extended her lead in the javelin throw, recording a distance of more than 106 feet to lead Profit by 125 points heading into the seventh and final event: the 800-meter run.

In order to win the heptathlon, Brown needed to stay within 10 seconds of Profit in the final event. This seemed a challenge since Profit’s times in the 800 meters were generally more than 10 seconds faster than Brown’s times. Profit indeed won the final event by a sizable margin and the competitors and their supporters lined up at the computer to eagerly see the final scores.

Brown won by 17 points.

Brown and Profit advance to the Junior Olympics with third-place finisher Kelsey Rubeor, who scored 3,838 points -- just enough to qualify to the nationals. Brown topped the 4,000-point mark with 4,414 to win the Western Regionals, followed by Profit with 4,397 points. The three will represent California, Nevada and Hawaii.

The Junior Olympics are scheduled July 26-27.

Will there be a San Diego champion this year? If so, it all started with the San Diego Multi-Event Championships at Cuyamaca College.