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Battlefield comes up big at districts
The post-season began in earnest this past week for several winter sports, but perhaps the biggest and best for western Prince William County came from the battling Bobcats in indoor track.Battlefield posted its best overall day ever on Feb. 9, with wins by both the boys and girls teams. Though the boys team has traditionally done well, the victory was a first for the girls in a district long dominated by Osbourn Park.
Senior Genevieve Johnson captured two titles for the girls with wins in the shot put and 55-meter dash, the latter of which came by 0.01 second over Stonewall Jackson’s Hope Flomo.
Dominique Evans, Shannon Anderson, Brea Zeise and Nikkisha Walker also brought back top spots for Battlefield.
For the boys, victories came by individuals and teams.
Junior Sebastian Paniagua and senior Matt Shaughnessy helped bring in 40 of Battlefield’s 139 points. They won solo events with Paniagua taking the 500-meter dash and and Shaughnessy winning the 1,000-meter run with a district record time.
Teaming up with each other and Nathan Moyer, they won the 4x800 and 4x400 meter relays with teammates Rossy Forry and Vaughn Franklin joining them, respectively. Other wins went to Byron Sintom for the long jump and shot putter Tyler Smith.
But perhaps the most compelling reason the boys and girls managed victories was the strength of their depth charts.
Battlefield earned points in 28 out of 30 events between the boys and girls teams. That meant that even when the Bobcat athletes were not winning 10 points for individual victories, they still consistently came away with eight-, six-, four-, two- and one-point showings — sometimes more than once in the same event.
That proved to be crucial for the girls team that bested OP 171 to 165.
Four times, Battlefield placed three girls in the top six spots for individual events, including all three jump contests and the 55-meter hurdles.
In the pole vault, sophomores Brea Zeise and Tara Rotante earned points simply by making eligible leaps in an event where no other team seriously competed. That gave Battlefield an extra 18 points.
Stonewall Jackson also had a few moments of glory, as the Raiders captured golds in five events.
UCLA-bound Damien Thigpen set a district record in the 300-meter dash with a run of 34.68, putting him 1.54 seconds in front of second-place teammate Kevin Parks.
Thigpen, the 300-meter state champion in 2008, also blew past the competition in the 55-meter dash by clocking in at 6:38, 0.04 seconds shy of the district record.
Thigpen was not the only 300-meter dasher to top out for Stonewall, as Flomo avenged her fraction-of-a-second loss to Johnson by winning one event of her own.
Parks made his mark in two events aside from his silver showing in the 300-meter dash. He won the triple jump and teamed up with Luis Medrano, Darryl Gaines and Aron Long for a district record-breaking victory in the men’s 4sx200-meter relay.
Wrestling
Meanwhile, in the wrestling world, senior Beau Martino (112 pounds), junior Matt Bowman (130) and senior Peter Psihas (215) combined for a perfect 9-0 record en route to securing three gold titles for Battlefield at the Cedar Run District wrestling championship tournament on Saturday.
The three Bobcats paved the way for Battlefield to capture third place in the district, a school best.
As expected, Fauquier crushed the opposition for first place with a whopping score of 279.50. However, Battlefield (156 points) came within two wins of host-team Loudoun Valley (166.50) for second place and posted the top score among the four teams from the Prince William County and City of Manassas area.
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