So the title of that post may be a little overdramatic, but it was pretty brutal at Easterns yesterday.

I give the athletes who competed a ton of credit for braving the heat. I’ll run through some of the meet’s highlights:

Caitlin Hudson continues to get better for Bronxville. She won the 800 yesterday with another PR, 2:14.70. I think Hudson is peaking at just the right time to run a great race at states.

The 1.600 was a great race also. Freshman Gina Talt edged out Tori Flannery by a mere half-second, and we may be looking at another up-and-comer in Section 1 distance running in Talt. It seemed like she surprised herself with the win, but she showed a lot of guts down the stretch running in extreme heat against an excellent runner in Flannery.

Jen Clayton picked up the triple jump early in the season and has taken just weeks to become a contender for a state title. The girl is just an unbelievable athlete. She jumped 38-10 to win yesterday, and she did something even better today, which I’ll have a blog post on a little later (so stay tuned). Dan and I thought she might not have been permitted to compete yesterday due to tardiness at school, but apparently everything got worked out.

One scary moment occurred just after the 400, when Elizabeth Mott had to be taken from the track in an ambulance and taken to Sound Shore Hospital due to heat exhaustion.  Mott won the race in 55.01, and seemed fine talking to reporters afterwards. But as soon as she sat down the heat seemed to really hit her hard, and she started feeling dizzy and nauseous.

There were some other good performances as well. New Rochelle’s Charlotte won the shot put in 37-6 1/4, and the Suffern 4 x mile of Carol Duganzic, Jana Soares, Sam Randazzo and Shelby Greany won in 21:17.8.