Duren shakes off rust at Bay State Invitational
NORTON — Usually when someone takes time off from working out, it can take quite a while to get back into the swing of things, especially when it comes to running.
Yet for a select few, such as Central Catholic’s Katharine Duren, all it takes to revert to form is a quick stretch, and the senior proved just why at the Bay State Running Invitational. The University of Alabama (Birmingham) recruit raced to a first-place finish in the girls’ 55-meter hurdles event with a time of 8.19 seconds — the second-fastest time recorded in the United States this year, impressing everyone at Wheaton College Saturday.
“It was the first race of the season for me,” Duren said. “I’ve just been training, so I just wanted to get a race in. I have some meets coming up, and I wanted to get one in before those big meets. It was just kind of a ‘see where you’re at right now’ point in the season.”
Duren was the MIAA state champion in the event last year. On Saturday, she found herself matched with quite an adversary — Peyton Rollins of BB&N. What would follow was a photo-finish, as Duren narrowly beat out the ISL speedster by the slimmest of margins: 0.01 seconds.
According to MileSplit, a website dedicated to logging times and stories for both cross-country as well as indoor track and field events throughout the country, Duren’s time was just .07 seconds short of the fastest time set this winter season by Tess Stapleton, an athlete from Fairfield Ludlowe High School in Connecticut.
One of the other impressive performances of the day came from Kaden Kluth, a junior from Portsmouth (R.I.) High School who signed up for the Bay State Running Invitational to prepare for the start of the Rhode Island Interscholastic League’s winter season slated to begin next week. Kluth finished as the day’s only individual double-winner, as he took first place in the boys’ 1,000-meter run (2:38.66), and in the 2-mile (10:06.15), during which he overtook multiple runners in the final lap.
As for other athletes of note, Brockton senior Dourvens Bleus edged Jonas Clarke of South Hadley for the second time in as many weeks during the boys’ 55meter dash, at 6.49 seconds. Newton North’s Max Klein won the boys’ shot put event for a second consecutive instance himself, this time with a toss of 55-05.50 feet.
The Bay State Running Invitational was the latest meet created this winter season by a series of coaches, most notably Matthew Carr of Burlington and Jayson Sylvain of West Bridgewater. The two worked alongside Sharon’s Timothy Cimeno on the MSTCA Executive Board, who helped set things up so that Wheaton College could host indoor track and field events through the end of January. Once students return to the school in February however, the MSTCA will be at the mercy of the City of Boston, which will determine if the Reggie Lewis Center will be reopened.
If the doors remain closed, the board is looking to get creative.
“We always just look to increase opportunities for each season,” Sylvain said. “If the MIAA says we are going to go ahead with Fall II indoor track, and that it’s going to be outdoors, we will work to figure out ways in which we can have invitationals done safely. We just don’t know what sites are going to want to have people there. But we’re prepared to create whatever opportunities that we can.”