Danbury's Depth Goes a Long Way

When a team wins a championships, there are usually one or two significant athletes who score most of the points.  Danbury has made it a habit of winning with their depth and overall balanced attack.  The Hatters did not win a single individual event, but managed to place multiple athletes in six events and and earn 28 of 30 possible points in the relays.  This win gave them their fourth consecutive victory and 15th in 17 years.

The individual star of the day was Greenwich's Safir Scott.  He cleared 6'8 in the high jump for the win, but moved up to state record height of 7'0.5.  He had cleared 7'0 last week in a dual meet so he knew he could do it and had two near misses  at his goal height.  Earlier in the day he won the long jump at 22-06.75 and  finished off the meet with near PR of 45'1 in the triple jump good for 26 of Greenwich's 34 points.

Tyler Gleen of Trumbull continued to do what he could for his team. He broke 49 seconds for the first time to win the 400m in 48.70, then came out of his normal range to take 4th in the 200m with a 22.71 and finished off the day with a 49.32 anchor leg in the 4 x 400m to help his teammates to a 2nd place finish in the event.

Zakeer Ahmad has returned to the form that won him the State Open championship in cross country.  He recently broke 9 minute in the 3200m for the win at the Loucks Games and won the Danbury Dream Invitational mile on Friday evening with a time of 4:15.  He sat in the pack in the 1600m and 3200m easily won his first event with a time of 4:21 and came back to show off his kick in the 3200m to hold off Wilton's Aaron Breene by under a second to finish in 4:23.13.

Notes:  Junior Jack Jones of Trumbull came out of nowhere to win the triple jump.  He had broken 40 ft last year in the triple, but only managed a seed of 39 ft this year coming into the meet.  But he popped off four jumps over 44 ft with a winning jump of 45'11 to give him a four ft PR.

Another big day came from Ridgefield Oliver Hayes who came into the meet with a PR of 12'0 and set three PRs to clear 13'6 to take 2nd place in the event.