State track: Valley Christian's Elena Bruckner ready for big stage; CIF adjusts schedule because of heat
By Darren Sabedra, dsabedra@bayareanewsgroup.com One of the area's storied high school track and field careers will end this weekend under sweltering conditions in Clovis. And if all goes Elena Bruckner's way, the Valley Christian star will leave Veterans Memorial Stadium at Buchanan High with state championships in the shot put and discus before she moves on to the University of Texas. Bruckner has the nation's top throw in the discus this season -- 186 feet, 10 inches. She is No. 2 nationally in the shot put, her mark of 54-7 trailing only the 55-1?1/4 that Alyssa Wilson of Monsignor Donovan in New Jersey threw. Bruckner enters this weekend's state finals seeded No. 1 in the shot put and No. 2 in the discus, the seeds based on qualifying results from section meets. Bruckner's winning marks at the Central Coast Section championships Friday in Gilroy were 53-8?1/2 in the shot put and 165-11 in the discus. Laulauga Tausaga-Collins of Mt Miguel threw 166-4 at the San Diego sectionals. Bruckner wasn't thrilled with her performance in the discus -- even though she won by more than 30 feet -- but said her result in the shot put was just what she needed moving forward. "Very happy with how I ended up in shot put," she said. "I am now feeling very confident going into the state meet. Really excited." Her goals at state are to throw farther than she has ever thrown before. Only five U.S. high school girls in history have better marks than Bruckner's personal record in the shot put -- the 54-7 -- and only three have superior marks than her 186-10 in the discus. The national shot put record is 56-8?1/4 and the national discus record is 198-9. "Absolutely I want to PR," Bruckner said. "I want to PR every day. But definitely state finals would be the place to do it." Schedule adjusted If she does it, her marks will come under sizzling conditions. The forecast for Friday in Clovis calls for a high of 106 and on Saturday the temperature is expected to reach 108. The brutally hot forecast caused the California Interscholastic Federation to revise its schedule Wednesday, with track events starting more than an hour later than planned. The first running events Friday are scheduled to start at 6:15 p.m. On Saturday, the running events will not start until 7 p.m. The longest running event in the program, the 3,200, does not have a Friday trial. The 3,200 finals Saturday will start at 10:10 p.m. for the girls and 10:25 p.m. for the boys. The girls discus will start at 4 p.m. Friday. All other field events will not begin until at least 5 p.m. On Saturday, the girls discus will start at 4:30 p.m. All other field events will not begin until at least 6 p.m. Speed City Bellarmine's 4x100 relay team, which broke a 28-year-old CCS meet record last week, will run its trials heat Friday around 6:30 p.m. The team of Devon Buenrostro, Kyle Macauley, Troy Martig and Earvin DaSilva -- which likes to call itself Speed City -- enters the meet as the No. 2 seed, having completed the one lap in 41.37 seconds at the CCS finals, the second-fastest time in the section's history, behind only Mt. Pleasant's 41.15 in 1992. Martig said the team's eyes will be on the all-time CCS record this weekend. "At state we're going for the CCS record,'' Martig said Friday. "We'll have two more chances at the trials and finals and Kyle will keep getting stronger.'' Macauley returned for the CCS finals after missing the previous five weeks because of a torn hamstring. In the girls high jump, three of the top four seeds are from CCS schools, including two (Los Gatos' Aine McNulty and Prospect's Olga Baryshnikova) from this newspaper's coverage area. The top four qualifiers all jumped 5-7 at sectional finals. Mt. Pleasant's Darius Carbin has cleared 7-0 in the boys high jump. But his mark of 6-7 at the CCS finals is tied with 10 other qualifiers, including St. Francis' Darius Thomas, and behind two who cleared 7-1 at section finals and one who cleared 6-8. Carbin seems confident that he can go higher, noting the small jumping area at Gilroy High. "The pit was too small,'' he said Friday. "I normally use a nine-step approach, but I had to use a five-step so I wouldn't fall off the pit and hurt myself. Still, I barely missed at 7-0 using the five-step.''