Trojans shine in field events at Red Rock Invitational

The Pahrump Valley Trojans track and field team competed in the Red Rock Running Company Invitational held at Shadow Ridge High School in Las Vegas over the weekend.

The invitational saw 16 schools compete from the Las Vegas area, in addition to the Trojans.

Green Valley High School took first place in the boys events, while Coronado took first place overall in the girls competitions.

The Pahrump Valley girls team finished in eighth place with a team score of 18 points. Unfortunately, the boys team didn’t receive any points for their performance in the competitions.

The Trojans as a whole didn’t run particularly well in this competition.

As a school, the boys and girls teams combined to have just three top 10 finishes in all of the individual competitions. The girls 4x400 meter relay team was the only team event the Trojans placed in the top 10.

The team of Dakota Fodge, Arianna Hamilton, Sasha Strain and Aurora Whitney finished the 4x400 meter relay event with a time of 4:44.58. Their time gave them a seventh place finish.

Fodge and Hamilton each had a top 10 finish for the Trojans in their individual events.

Fodge’s top 10 finish came in the 400-meter race. She finished with a personal record time of 1:04.21, good for an eighth-place finish.

Hamilton got her top 10 finish in the 100-meter hurdles event. She had a time of 19.72 seconds, which put her in ninth place for the race.

The only other track event in which the Trojans had a top 10 finish was the boys 110-meter hurdles event.

Sophomore Cole Miller finished in ninth place with a personal record time of 20.48 seconds. He finished just two one-hundredths of a second ahead of the 10th place finisher from Moapa Valley.

Despite the tough day on the track, the Trojans had multiple top 10 finishes, including two top 3 finishes, in the field events.

Senior Jessica Kern had both of the top three finishes for Pahrump Valley.

She had a second-place finish in the girls shot put event. Kern finished with a personal record distance of 35 feet, 2 inches. She finished just seven inches behind Samantha Morris, the event winner from Green Valley High School.

Kern’s third-place finish came in the discus throw. She finished tied with Jayla Carroll of Canyon Springs with a distance of 98 feet, 4 inches.

The Trojans boys team finished with two top 10 finishes in the field events.

Junior Elijah Hill finished the discus event in ninth place. He threw a distance of 107 feet, 7 inches, beating out 10th place finisher Jayme Carvajal of Moapa Valley by just five inches.

Sophomore Brennan Benedict also scored a top 10 finish for Pahrump Valley. He came in ninth place in the high jump competition with a successful height of 5 feet, 6 inches. Benedict tied with two other jumpers at that height.

Benedict also had the best finish of any Trojan in the boys track events. He finished the 200-meter race in 12th place with a personal record time of 24.47 seconds, just two tenths of a second behind 10th place.

The next track and field competition for the Trojans will be on Wednesday, April 6, when the teams travel to Bonanza High School in Las Vegas. The competition is set to begin at 4:30 p.m.