Fernandes, Venturo get wins for Pahrump Valley at midweek meet

The Pahrump Valley track team got back to business Tuesday afternoon with a midweek meet at Desert Oasis High School.

Five schools – Pahrump Valley, Desert Oasis, Bishop Gorman, Spring Valley and Awaken Christian – from the 3A, 4A and 5A divisions competed in the meet.

Bishop Gorman and Spring Valley were among the top teams in the meet. The two schools combined to win 18 of the 26 events between the boys and girls, with Gorman winning 12 of those events.

The Trojans had two competitors win their matches.

Junior Dakota Fernandes ran her fastest time of the season on her way to winning the girls 400-meter race. She finished with a time of 1:06.78, beating her previous fastest time of 1:06.97 at the Palo Verde weekday meet nearly two weeks ago.

The other win for Pahrump Valley came from senior Cole Venturo in the boys long jump competition.

Venturo finished with a distance of 20 feet, 5 ½ inches, setting a new personal record in his young career with the Trojans.

This is his first season being a part of the track team at Pahrump Valley.

Despite only having two winning competitors, the Trojans still had multiple athletes finish in the top five of their event.

Fernandes took home two of the six second-place finishes for the Trojans at the Oasis midweek meet. She scored second-place finishes in the girls 200-meter race, ending with a time of 28.75 seconds, and the girls 4x200-meter relay race.

Fernandes and her teammates – Dakota Fodge, Payton Weaver and Diona Nixon – finished the relay race with a time of 2:05.

Senior Lilian McGhee had two of the top-5 finishes for the Trojan girls team.

She took third in the long jump competition with her best jump of the year, 14 feet, 7 ½ inches, and she finished in fourth place in the 200-meter race with a time of 29.77 seconds.

Grace Miller, Sasha Strain, Julianna Ondrisko and Savannah Thompson had the other top-5 finishes in the girls competitions.

Strain and Ondrisko both got second-place finishes for the Trojans.

Ondrisko set a personal record time of 6:05.25 in the 1,600-meter race, while Strain scored her second-place finish in the 300-meter hurdle event with a time of 56.55 seconds.

Miller ended her 800-meter race in third place with a personal record time of 2:45.01 and Thompson closed out the top-5 finishes with a fourth-place finish in the 3,200-meter race with a time of 16:25.14.

The boys team ended their meet with seven top-5 finishes in addition to Venturo’s first-place finish.

The Trojans finished runners-up in the 4x100-meter and the 4x800-meter relay races.

The 4x100-meter team made up of juniors Cole Miller, Brandon Ondrisko, Brennen Benedict and Mikey Skinner finished the event with a time of 48.04 seconds.

They finished just .20 seconds ahead of the third-place team from Spring Valley.

The Trojans’ 4x800-meter team finished just .53 seconds behind Bishop Gorman for first place. The team of Benjamin DeSantiago, Jacob Gray, Ayden Veloz and Jace Wulfenstein completed the race with a time of 9:38.40.

Skinner and the boys’ 4x200-meter team took home third-place finishes for Pahrump Valley.

Skinner set a personal record distance of 19 feet, 6 inches in the long jump competition. His previous record was 19 feet, 2 inches set during the 2022 season at the Boulder City midweek track meet.

The remaining top-5 finishers for the Trojans were Cole Miller, Brennen Benedict and the boys’ 4x400-meter team.

Miller took fourth place in the 300-meter hurdle event with a personal record time of 48.16 seconds, while Benedict got a fifth-place finish in the triple jump event with a personal record distance of 34 feet, 5 inches.

The 4x400-meter team of Veloz, Grary, Wulfenstein and Keegan Freeman finished in fourth place with a time of 4:03.35.

Pahrump will be off until the end of next week when they head to Overton for the Richard Lewis Invitational.

The meet will take place at Moapa Valley High School on Friday, March 31 and the events will begin at 4:30 p.m.

Contact sports writer/editor Danny Smyth at dsmyth@pvtimes.com. Follow @_dannysmyth on Twitter.