By Jim Bickford

Contributing Writer

trackmic@juno.com

Led by Most Valuable Performers Melanie Benit on the track and Keondra Lafrance in the field, Chalmette High’s Lady Owl track and field team captured the championship of the High Flying Owls Invitational last Thursday at Bobby Nuss Stadium.

Even though they won only three of 18 events, the Lady Owls scored 158 points to overwhelm the five other girls’ teams as Archbishop Chapelle finished second to Chalmette with 105 points and were followed by East Jefferson at 82, DeLaSalle 74, Lusher Charter 70 and Archbishop Hannan 38.

East Jefferson claimed the boys’ division – outscored the host Owls 138 to 110 and finished first in 10 events — winning all three throwing events, capturing both hurdle events, claiming two of the three distance races and taking two of the three relays as well as finishing first in the 100 and topping off all of that with three of its athletes tying for the track MVP.

Chalmette’s Andre’ Dorsey was selected the meet’s boys’ field MVP as the junior athlete won the triple jump with a personal record of 44-2.75 and one of the metro’s top leaps this year, finished second in the high jump (5-8) and placed third in the javelin (141-2).

Following the top two boys’ squads were Lusher Charter 51, Archbishop Hannan 38 and De La Salle 23.

Owl first places came from senior distance runner Ben Hauck in the 3,200-meter run (11:31.80) and he added a third in the 1,600 (5:13.40) as well as sophomore Terry Guiterrez winning the pole vault (7-6).

Chalmette had several other strong double event finishers – David Bienemy finished second in the long jump (20-4) and in the triple jump (43-0.75); Paul Sampson was the runner-up in both the 800-meter run (2:13.95) and 400-meter dash (54.45); Albert Brock finished second in the 300-meter hurdles (45.05) and third in the 110-meter hurdles (17.21) and Chris Duplessis took second in the discus (119-10, PR) and third in the shot put (43-4).

Lafrance won the triple jump (31-2) and the long jump (14-6.50) to claim the girls’ field MVP while her teammate Benit won the 1600-meter run (6:37.99) and the 300-meter hurdles (56.35 seconds) to earn the girls’ track MVP and she finished second in the pole vault (7-6).

Junior Jordan Hartney added a strong performance for the Lady Owls’ cause, winning the javelin in a PR throw of 103-8 and and finishing as the high jump runner-up at 4-8 in her first competition ever in the event as well as running the anchor leg on the third place 4×100-meter foursome (54.94 seconds) of Breyion Williams, Tateyana Smith and Keondra Lafrance and Hartney took fifth in the 100 (14.09).

Senior Carley McInnis won the 100-meter hurdles (19.41 seconds), added a third in the 300 hurdles (58.86) and ran a leg on the second-place 4×200-meter relay team of Vershione Toney, Melanie Fink and Alex Schmaltz with a time of 2:01.16.

Toney lost a photo-finish in the 400-meter dash with a PR time of 1:05.50, losing by just 0.05 hundredths of a second as well as running on the second-place 4×200 relay and third place 4×400 relay (4:50.32).

Melanie Fink finished third in the 800 (2:51.06) and ran on two relay teams while Schmaltz finished fourth in the 800 (2:53.99) and ran on same two relay teams as well.

Williams placed in three jumping events – third in the long jump (13-10), fourth in the triple jump (28-4) and fifth in the high jump (4-2) and ran on the third-place 4×100 relay squad.

Chalmette hosts its third meet of the season today with field events starting at 3:30 p.m. at Bobby Nuss Stadium and running events at 6:15 p.m.