Escalon got its first taste of track and field action with a trip to Oakdale for a scrimmage on March 5, and head coach Roger Beeman was excited about what he saw.

“We had some good early season marks at our practice meet at Oakdale on Thursday,” he said. “It looks like we are going to have a strong freshman class for the third year in a row; the work of coaches Claudia Alves and Brian Ney at El Portal is really starting to pay off for us.”

The frosh-soph teams will travel to San Andreas for the Calaveras Invitational on Friday, March 13.

“Both the boys and girl teams should contend for the team titles,” Beeman said.

On Saturday, coaches took a select group to Golden Valley High School in Merced for the Dean Andreessen Invitational.

Leone Rivers (1st in pole vault 7'0"; 4th 200m 28.85; 5th 300 hurdles 54.47) and Kimberly Boss (5th triple jump 27'1.5"; 7th high jump 4'2") medaled for the varsity girls. Sophomore Sarah-Jade Brown took 8th in the Varsity shot put (26'9") which would have won had she thrown in her usual frosh-soph division.

Frosh-soph girls medalists included Grace Eckhardt (7th long jump 10'4"); Jenny Van Lewen (5th 800m 2:49.27); Nora Nash (2nd 1600m 6:01.8); Ashley Carreira (6th 100m 14.85; 5th 200m 30.99); Monique Williams (3rd 100m hurdles 20.23; 4th 300m hurdles 1:01.19); Alicia Williams (1st discus 68'3"); and the 4x100m relay team (Eckhardt, Macey Wall, Gabby Avalos, Carreira) took 6th in 1:00.7.

The varsity boys had two medalists: Ryan Schuurman won the pole vault at 10'6", and David Escove took fourth in the discus at 113'6". The frosh-soph boys had Chad Moreno take third in the discus at 87'2", and Eddie Calderon took 8th in the 1600m (5:17.15).