The Menlo School track & field team sent a record number of athletes to the Central Coast Section Championships, and senior Summer Young, CCS high jump champion, and junior Landon Pretre, silver medalist in the 3200-meter race, are headed to the state meet.

The state meet begins with trials on Friday and finals Saturday. Young will jump in the trials at 7:00 pm Friday and if she is one of 12 to qualify, she heads to finals starting at 4:45 pm Saturday. Pretre goes straight to finals, and will start at 9:35 pm Saturday.

Menlo senior Summer Young is the CCS high jump champion after clearing 5-6 on her first attempt Saturday at Gilroy HSYoung cleared 5 feet, 6 inches, knotted with Monta Vista’s Leilani Laruelle, but Young reached the mark on her first attempt, and both missed at 5-8. Young, who first started jumping just over a year ago when she advanced to state after setting a school-record jump of 5-5. She helped her Menlo basketball team to the NorCal finals before joining track & field then she placed 10th at state a month later.

“It was kind of hectic because everything was happening so fast, but at the end of last season, I knew I wanted to keep doing this,” Young said “I love competing. I love this atmosphere. I came here knowing what I wanted to do.”

She and five others have jumped a state season-best 5-8 - her mark came at St. Francis Invitational. This year, in the fall, she helped the Menlo flag football team to a 15-1 record in its inaugural season, and in the winter, helped the basketball team to back-to-back CCS Championships. Young earned two other CCS bids after she ran a leg in the WBAL champion 4x100 relay, and won silver in long jump. After graduation, she is headed to BYU to further her studies and her track & field career.

Last year, Young finished 10th with a jump of 5-5, and this year, she has her sights set.

“I want to prove to myself what I can do. This is the last meet of the season.”  

Knights junior Landon Pretre took silver in the 3200m race, and is bound for the state championships.Pretre also returns to the state championships. As a sophomore, Pretre ran on the CCS champion 4x800 relay last season. He suffered an injury during cross country season, and came back with a vengeance in the spring. In just his third race back his junior season, Pretre set a CCS-record mark of 8:48.11 in the Arcadia Invitational. He holds the seventh-best mark in the state this season.

The boys’ 4x800 of junior Jared Saal, Henry Hauser, sophomore Amay Srinivasan and junior William Hauser took bronze and nearly returned to state, missing second place by .16 with a time of 8:00.29 .

Junior Veronica Taira was 10th in the 800 in 10:16.71, then came back an hour later to help the Menlo relay team. The girls’ 4x800 of sophomore Ariya Kaushek, freshmen Emily Li, Marissa Louie and Taira were 15th 10:16.71.