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JFK's Wrazen breaks 300-meter school record
JFK High School junior Andy Wrazen is etching his name onto the long list of successful Kennedy indoor track athletes. He made a name for himself last weekend at the 4th Annual Tiger Invitational at the Rochester Institute of Technology.
Wrazen set a school record of 38.14 seconds in the 300-meter run, breaking the former 2005 mark set by Cody Elliott, by 1.10 seconds. Wrazen later finished fifth in the 55- meter high hurdles with a time of 8.19 seconds.
JFK head coach Pete Szymanski praised Wrazen for his dedication.
"We always told Andy that he is capable of doing (great) things and, finally, Andy seems to have bought into those ideas," Szymanski said. "We haven't had an athlete from Section VI run that kind of a time so early in the season."
That wasn't all for Wrazen, who also led the Bears' 4x400 relay team- which also consisted of sophomore Brandon Wyatt-Bell, freshman Nathan Odrobina and senior Steve Blenker- to a schoolrecord time of 3:45.83.
Blenker and senior Chris Scharf also ran personal bests, as Scharf placed fourth among 44 throwers with a distance of 45 feet, 6 1/2 inches. Blenker barely missed qualifying for sectionals (by 1/24th of a second) in the 600-meter run, still finishing 13th out of 51 runners with a time of 1:30.48.
Odrobina (4:56.85 in the 1,600- meter run) and Wyatt-Bell (40.12 seconds in the 300-meter run) also contributed personal-best performances.
On the girls' side, the JFK 4x800 relay team- consisting of senior Jessica Stechenfinger, junior Moriah Orwat, freshman Nikki Suwalski and junior Denise Brucz- finished 11th overall with a time of 10:54.64.
Stechenfinger (seventh in the 3,000-meter run with a 11:39.88) and junior Alyssa Poniwas (seasonbest throw of 24'6") contributed solid performances. Freshmen Jilliam Golembiewski and eighth grader Emilee McGee each ran personal best times in the 1,000-meter and 55-meter dashes, respectively.
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