Elmont's Ashley Fulton has burst in 100 win at Nassau state qualifier

Ashley Fulton was standing tall, and not a moment too soon.

The Elmont sophomore was a little more than 30 meters down the runway in the Nassau Division I girls 100 meters race on Saturday when she popped up and moved forward. The movement was slight, but very important. Fulton said she had struggled with popping up too early in the event, one where staying extremely low to the ground is essential in the first half.

“It’s a mental thing,” Fulton said. “If your body is that close to the [ground], your body naturally is going to try and stop yourself from falling, so you come up. Once you understand that you’re not going to fall, if you stay down more you’re eventually going to come up and it works better.”

Fulton won the event in 12.35 seconds on the second and final day of the Nassau girls track and field state qualifier at North Shore High School in Glen Head.

The win qualified Fulton for the state championships, scheduled for Friday and Saturday at Cicero North Syracuse High School. 

“I feel ready for next week,” Fulton said after her 100 win. “I feel like today was definitely a little view of what I might do next week …. I can definitely be a little faster next week, but where I am right now is not bad. I will definitely have competition next week, so I’ll definitely be running faster.”

Mepham’s Camylin Blake also feels ready for the state championships. Blake won the Division I 100 meter hurdles in 14.63 seconds. The win came a day after Blake won the 400-meter hurdles in 1:06.02 on the first day of the state qualifier. The senior said she intends to compete in both events at the state championships.

Blake started running the 400 hurdles this season, not quite sure how her speed would translate to the longer, more mid-distance-like event. She said she’s been pleasantly surprised with her progression and hopes that increased competition in Cicero will bring fast times.

“We didn’t really know how far we were going to go with them,” Blake said. “But we’ve decided that I look pretty good in them. I think once I get strong competition at states, I should probably surprise everyone with my time.”

On Saturday, Blake was her usual dominant self in the shorter version of the hurdles, winning by almost a full second – an eternity in a race under 200 meters.

“I executed the end of my race better than I have in past races, just  because I was able to handle the speeding up of momentum and rhythm better than before,” Blake said. “I think I’ve dealt with speed training in the later half of my season better. I think speeding myself up recently has allowed me to excel and [set a personal best] continuously.”

Elsewhere, Wheatley’s Julia Schriefer won the 1,500 in 4:34.94, emerging out of a fantastic duel between three of the top distance runners in the county. Jericho’s Ana Markovina took the race out fast, leading for most of the early portion by multiple steps before Schriefer overtook her with 600 meters left. Moments later, Markovina’s teammate, Mackenzie Setton, passed Schriefer and led for 200 meters before the Wheatley senior regained control with 300 left and rolled down the home straightaway toward a nearly four-second win.

Setton was second in 4:38.92 and Markovina was third in 4:41.95.

“I was feeling pretty good when I made that move,” Schriefer said of passing Markovina. “Then, when Mackenzie [Setton] passed me, I was like ‘Ok, there’s one lap to go, I just have to give everything I’ve got.' I felt like I still had a little more left in me, so with 300 to go, I made one last kick and I just felt good all the way through.”

Schriefer finished second in the 800 in 2:13.99 Friday. West Hempstead’s Victoria Guerrier won that race in 2:12.21 but, by virtue of running the ‘super-standard’ time earlier in the season, Schriefer qualified for the state championships in both individual distance events.

 “I’m definitely happy with how today went,” Schriefer said. “I didn’t run what I wanted to run in the 800 yesterday, so that was kind of disheartening, then today I went into this race thinking, 'All right, there’s no pressure.’ Let’s just do my best. I wasn’t overthinking it too much.”