Baldwin trio win track titles

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Baldwin turned in a strong performance at the Nassau Class AAA track and field championships at Long Beach Middle School on May 25. The Bruins (9-4 overall) finished fourth as a team and three athletes took home individual county titles with and another earning All-County honors with a third-place finish.

“It was a great meet with a lot of great kids and great competition,” coach Rich Carroll said. “Our guys did the right thing and competed to the best of their ability.”

Leading the way was senior shot putter Miguel McKenzie, who set a school-record for the second consecutive week in the event. One week after breaking the Bruins’ all-time record of 51-feet with a throw of 53-feet, 3-inches, McKenzie added more than another foot to the benchmark. He took home the County title with a throw of 54-4, after the second-place finisher, Farmingdale’s Del Voltaire, hit 53-4. No other competitor threw for more than 49 feet. “It was one of the best competitions I had ever seen in the shot,” Carroll said. “Watching him go across the circle is like watching a skater on ice. [The throw] was so perfect and concise.

“He’s a very focused young man in the weight room and the circle,” Carroll added “He’s very good at blocking things out when he’s in there. It doesn’t matter who’s standing around. It’s just him.”

Junior Benjamin Ross followed up an All-County winter track campaign with an even better performance in the spring. He won the county championship in the high jump with a leap of 6-feet, 2-inches, outdistancing the next best competitor in the event by two inches. “He hit 6-2 at the North Shore Invitational two weeks ago,” Carroll said. “We were hoping he would be in the mix and he had already hit the state standard [with a jump of 6-3 earlier in the season].”

Junior Chris Nunez-Saunders, who missed a chunk of the season with a calf injury, returned to the field with a force. Having already hit the New York State standard in the long jump (22-feet, 2-inches) with a season-high jump of 22-4, Nunez-Saunders went out and won an individual county title with a jump of 21-9 ½ at Long Beach.

Junior Will Salmon was named Baldwin’s Most Valuable Player for his work and performance in multiple events — 1600-meter run, 800m, 4x800m relay and the 4x400m — and earned All-County honors with a third place finish in the 1600m (4:27.26).

The 4x100 meter relay team of seniors Dion Spradley, and Kenny Hoursey, junior Matt Washington, and Nunez-Saunders finished second in the event (43.8 seconds), just one second off the pace set by Uniondale, but 0.7 seconds behind the time needed to qualify for the NYSPHAA Championships. They will get one more chance to hit the qualifying time at North Shore along with junior Frank Mulvey, who took fifth in the 800m (2:02). Sophomore Russell Johnson hopes to shave one second off his personal best time (58.58) in the 400-meter hurdles.