WACO -- It looked like a recipe for disaster, but the A&M Consolidated Tigers ended up with a tasty dish.
Competitive from the start in the 4x200-meter relay Friday at the Class 5A Region II track & field meet, Tiger anchor Steven Lucas moved up in the exchange zone and then ran back in his lane to take the final handoff from Marcus Seawood. Lucas ran a strong straightaway to punch his team's ticket to Saturday's finals at Baylor's Hart-Patterson Track.
"One of the dudes told me to run up, but I didn't want [Seawood] to have to run that far, so I came to get it," Lucas said. "We did have a good handoff. I was just up to far and had to come back to get it."
The Tigers ran a season-best time of 1 minute, 28.79 seconds to earn the sixth qualifying spot, .75 behind South Garland's third-place time. District 12-5A's Killeen Ellison won its heat with the day's best time, 1:26.19. The Tigers were the only runners for A&M Consolidated or Bryan to reach the running finals.
The opening day of competition was marked by Consol's 4x200 success, with Josh Burnett pushing them to second coming out of the blocks before he handed to Andrew Fletcher.
The day also included missing regional qualifiers in three events.
A&M Consolidated senior Keri Wood would have qualified for state in the 800 if the regional track meets had not been reinstated after the swine flu alterations. She had run a best time of 2:16.32, so the Arkansas signee sat that event out to throw all of her competitive skills into Saturday's 1,600. It was a gamble as far as qualifying for state, but it has a chance to improve her medal hopes at the state meet if she gets there.
Her time in the 1,600 is 5:02.21, the region's third-fastest behind a 4:54.64 by The Woodlands' Sarah Andrews and a 4:56.47 run by Vista Ridge's Ashley Isham. Andrews and Isham finished 1-2, respectively, in the 3,200 with Andrews rewriting the regional record with a time of 10:36.11.
Two other regional qualifiers, Bryan's Fono Vakalahi in the shot put and Tre Odom in the 200, withdrew because of conflicts.
Odom withdrew from the 200 prelims Friday because he had a conflict and would have been unable to run Saturday if he had qualified for the finals.
Vakalahi did not compete in the shot put. He was in California because of a death in the family but is expected to return for the discus Saturday, where he will be the favorite.
In the high jump, A&M Consolidated's Haley Thompson finished sixth by matching her district mark of 5 feet, 4 inches, but narrowly missed on her second try at 5-6 where she brushed the bar.
"Oh, it was so close," Thompson said. "I felt really good and when I went over it, I felt like I touched it just a little bit and it came down."
Thompson bounced off the mat after sending the bar wobbling at 5-4 but clearing safely. Jesse Drummond cleared 5-2, one of 14 jumpers to conquer that height. Tyler Lee's LaGloria Johnson won at 5-8.
Bryan's Ty Spradlin and A&M Consolidated's Steven Lucas each cleared 6-4 in the high jump, with Lucas getting over on his third attempt after missing badly on his second try. Neither could clear 6-6 and finished out of contention. Spradlin had set a career best of 6-6 at the District 12-5A meet.
"The first jump I was nervous, but after that the butterflies went away," said Spradlin, who added that the 9:30 a.m. start provided a challenge different from most of his meets. "At 6-6, I wasn't jumping straight up, just kind of jumping into it."
Seven jumpers advanced to 6-8 in an event won by Tomball's Tyler Lee at 6-10. Temple's Chris Randle, who was the 12-5A runner-up, finished second and qualified for state with his 6-8 jump.
With Odom out of the 200, that morning competition was the last for Bryan on Friday.
Jerry Tennell threw 47 feet, 8 3/4 inches on his first attempt in the shot put and failed to qualify for the finals.
"I just threw terrible today," Tennell said.
Karla Gilbert threw well, a career-best 39-3 1/2, and the A&M Consolidated junior was announced as a finalist in the shot before officials checked their calculations. In the end Gilbert fell one place short of the final, won by Mesquite Horn's Kelsey Samuels with a throw of 46-9 1/2.
Uneven pacing in Consol's 800 heat, which was the slowest of three, hurt the Tigers' Chase Teinert and Jesse Hall. Teinert went out slowly but finished with a hard sprint, running a 1:59.05. Hall ran 2:04.30.
"The swine flu deal messed me up pretty bad, but it messed up everyone," Teinert said. "You're ready to race. Then they told me my season is over, so I get into this mode to get ready for college. They told me two or three days later that I'm running. It was a weird transition, but you've just got to push through those things."
The Tigers' mile relay team of Kareem Ishaq, Fletcher, Vincent Brown and Lucas ran their top time of the year, 3:26.12, but did not advance.
Consol's Ashley Adeyemi fell short of the finals in the 100-meter hurdles, running a 15.68. It was her season best, but just 14th in qualifying. In the 3,200, Morgan Hartmann was eighth (11:39.83) and Chase Mathews ninth (11:42.67) -- both career bests. Katy Williams ran 12:06.62.