Monahans Sweeps 3-3A Titles
        By Chris Gove  ~  Odessa American  ~  April 15, 2006

PECOS---Though it wasn’t necessarily much of a surprise, Monahans High School’s boys and girls still had to get a sense of satisfaction Friday out of their performances in the District 3-3A Track and Field Championships.

Monahans swept the team titles in the one-day event hosted by Pecos High School, taking the boys title with 208 points while winning the girls title with 202.33 points.

The top three individual finishers in each event qualify for the Region I-3A Championships, scheduled for April 28-29 at Ratliff Stadium.

With sweltering temperatures hovering around the 100-degree mark, survival was one of the biggest keys.
“It was so hard, it was really hard,” Monahans junior Chelsea Cartwright said. “We were just trying to stay hydrated and we were trying to compete and we had that one goal of winning.”

Cartwright did plenty of that herself, taking the long jump and triple jump titles – her 36-11.5 in the triple was a personal best – before adding victories in both the 100 hurdles and 100 meters.

Also for the Monahans girls, Bree Williams won the pole vault, Catherine Cutbirth took the 800 meters, Crystal Madrid won the 300 hurdles and Jordan Latham captured the 200.

The Lady Loboes also took the 400 and 800 relays.  For the Pecos girls, Chantell Mazone captured the discus.

On the boys side, Monahans got a typical 1-2-3 finish in the shot put from Steven Richardson, Josh Truex and Michael Murphree with Truex adding the discus title.  In other field events, Devon Fann took the long jump and Andrew Arredondo captured the pole vault for the Loboes with Colby Latham winning the high jump.

The Loboes then took the 400 and 800 relays and Chris Collins captured the 800 to round out their victory.

“There’s a lot of us that want to go to state,” Collins said. “Everybody’s going to be working a lot harder. (The team title) feels good.”

In other impressive performances, Fort Stockton senior David Palma swept the 1,600 and 3,200 titles for the third consecutive season while another Panthers senior – J.J. Hickman – captured the 300 hurdles. Hickman was a state qualifier in the event last season.

Fort Stockton also got a 1-2 finish in the 400 from Adrian Navarro and Sam Franklin.