GILROY — Aptos High senior sprinter Danner Pardue had that look.
He called it a look of “determination.”
His coach saw it differently.
“He looked like a man possessed,” said Aptos first-year head coach Zach Hewett. “He came around the bend and he was gone.”
Rounding the corner and kicking to the finish line of the 200-meters at Friday’s Central Coast Section Track & Field Championships, Pardue found another gear to take third and squeak into the prestigious California Interscholastic Federation state meet.
“I just couldn’t really believe it, honestly,” Pardue said, leaning over several minutes after his race still trying to catch his breath. “At the beginning of the season I didn’t think I’d be running at state. I almost didn’t do track in the first place but to now make it to state is pretty cool.”
An ankle injury and a torn anterior cruciate ligament sidelined Pardue each of the last two seasons, and tight hamstrings this season left him pondering whether or not to run his senior year.
Turns out he made the right decision to lace up the spikes for one final go.
“He’s been through a lot. He’s had a hard time staying healthy but when he can run, he can run,” Hewett said. “We knew that he was something special and for him to achieve this is great.”
Pardue started to hit his peak in the 200 toward the end of the season, setting his personal best mark of 22.38 seconds en route to the Santa Cruz Coast Athletic League Championship. Yet his time on Friday (22.45) didn’t continue the trend. Pardue said he believed he needed to shatter his best time in order to advance to state.
“But I guess I didn’t after all,” Pardue quipped. “Who cares? I’m in.”
The CIF Track & Field Championships are scheduled for June 2 and 3 at Veterans Memorial Stadium on the campus of Buchanan High in Clovis. Preliminaries are on Friday and finals take place the following day. Field events for the prelims start at 3 p.m. and the track events begin at 5 p.m.
Pardue, who will run track at Chico State next season, according to Hewett, said he was already content with his season.
“I don’t have any goals now. I’m happy,” Pardue said.
Which was far from how he felt after his 100 earlier in the day. Pardue exploded off the blocks and stayed in third place through the first 75 meters but couldn’t hold off Valley Christian’s Nikolas Trofort and Santa Teresa High’s Darius Van Den Akker. He finished fifth with a time of 11.16.
“You could see he was upset after that,” Hewett said. “He did a really good job of taking that anger and channeling it into something good.”
Pardue was the lone local athlete of five that will make the trip to Clovis next week to compete against the best high school athletes in the state.
His teammates Bella Dufek and Alex Austen fell a few spots short of qualifying.
Dufek, a four-time CCS finalist and two-time state meet qualifier, matched her season-record in the high jump by clearing 5 feet, 3 inches but struck out from there, missing the state-qualifying mark of 5-5 to take fifth.
Austen, meanwhile, couldn’t recapture the magic of last week’s CCS semifinals where he beat his personal best mark in the discus by nearly six feet to advance to the finals. His toss of 140-8 landed him in eighth.
In the pole vault pit, Monte Vista Christian’s Delaney Ezeji-Okoye never left the side of Santa Catalina’s Laurel Wong, a state qualifier last year and one of Ezeji-Okoye’s many training partners who meet with famed pole vaulting coach Joe Miyoshi throughout the season at Soquel High.
Over the next few years, Ezeji-Okoye, a freshman, and Wong, a sophomore, might develop a healthy rivalry — they were two of only three underclassmen competing in the event — but on Friday the day belonged to the latter. Wong cleared 13-even to win the CCS Championship, while Ezeji-Okoye cleared 10-6 on her third and final attempt to finish 11th.
Ezeji-Okoye said she knew she had to have her best day of the season in order to qualify for state. Matching her personal best mark of 11-even on her first attempt would have put her through but the Monterey Bay League Pacific division champion had not cleared that height in two months.
Since then, her health has deteriorated. On Friday she was dealing with shin splints, a tweaked hip flexor and a strained back. She also had her left hand wrapped up like a burrito because of an accidental cut with a kitchen knife, which happened about three weeks ago.
“I jumped OK. I would’ve like to done better but coming off a season with injuries it was a pretty good day to clear some bars,” said Ezeji-Okoye, who was one of 13 freshman that made the CCS finals. “Even though I’m not going to state, it feels good to know that I cleared some bars and I took some attempts that I felt good with.”
Ezeji-Okoye said she started vaulting when she was 11 but only became serious about the event during eighth grade. She started training with Miyoshi then and said she’s been inspired by the athletes that she’s practiced with over the years, including Pacific Collegiate School’s Erika Malaspina, the Santa Cruz County record holder who finished runner-up at state last season and now competes for Stanford.
“It’s nice to be able to have this under my belt going into the summer,” said Ezeji-Okoye, who also starred in the sprints for the Mustangs this season. “I’m just happy to have even made it here.”
Watsonville High junior runner Daniela Salazar also stayed chipper despite falling short of qualifying for the state meet.
She finished sixth in the 800 and also fell less than a second short of resetting her school record in the event with a time of 2:17.98.
Competing in her first CCS final, Salazar said she was “boxed in” during the first lap and never really recovered the pace she had planned to run.
“All the girls are in there shoving you around,” said Salazar, the MBL-Pacific division champion in the 800 and 3,200 this season. “It just happens for races like these.”
