The Bakersfield College track and field team hosted the BC relays on March 13, with the women coming in first and the men finishing in second.
The men had three first-place finishes and three second-place finishes, while the women had six first- place finishes and four second-place finishes.
The men fell to Antelope Valley by the team scores of 206.5 to 178 but beat out College of the Canyons who had 130.5. The women beat out AVC and Canyons with the scores of BC 157, AVC 138, and COC 134.5. In the 800-meter, run Melinda Magee came in first with an elapsed time of 2.38.33.
In the long jump competition, Chanel Reaves jumped 17 feet to get a first-place finish.
According to Coach Dave Frickel, the team finished strongly because of Chelsea Cassulo’s four first-place finishes. Cassulo placed first in the shot put, hammer, discus and javelin.
“She had an outstanding day, just an awesome day, she did what she needed to do for us and really pushed the girls ahead,” said Frickel. “Three or four events she’s in, she’s in the top 10 in Southern California.”
For the men, Eddie Morrow has been the standout. Morrow won the 400-meter hurdles with the time of 54.12. Morrow is in the top three in the Southern California area in the 400 hurdles and, according to Frickel, he can only get better.
“I think coming in second can help us out. It’ll give them a confidence boost and when the conference mini-meets come up we’ll be ready,” said Frickel. “A lot of the kids improved their marks, so they are showing the improvement we expected to see out of them.”
Frickel spoke about expectations for the upcoming Western State Conference matchup on March 19.
“This week we have a conference meet. It’s the first of two, and we only have two because we had to cut back some due to the economic cuts we had to make,” said Frickel. “The teams we’re going against, I think we match up real well. Hoping for both the men and women to finish as high as we can this week.
“The mini-meets also factor in to the overall score at the end of the year for the championship and for the conference, so obviously we want to finish as high as we can.”