Patriots sweep the Liberty Invitational

The Liberty track and field team invited some of the top schools in the area to its Liberty Invitational track meet Saturday, and the results couldn’t have been better for the home team.

The Patriots won the boys and girls team titles, beating out Coronado for both victories.

“I knew the boys were going to be close. It looks like it’s going to be that way between (Las) Vegas and Coronado and us going forward the rest of the year,” coach Geoff Walker said. “I didn’t know the girls would kind of get away as it did. We knew the girls were good but we sort of didn’t realize how many points we had out there. “

Liberty’s boys finished with 102 points, edging second-place Coronado by 2½ points. The girls won a bit more comfortably, outdistancing the second-place Cougars 103-94½.

Junior Gabby Carson led the girls in victory by earning the Athlete of the Meet award for the Patriots.

“Gabby is the most coachable girl that we have on our team,” Walker said. “Any correction that we give her and anything that we ask her to do she’s always 100 percent for it. She’s always positive. I’m just proud of her overall effort today.”

Carson cleared 11 feet, 6 inches to win the pole vault, and also finished first in the long jump with a mark of 16 feet. She was second in the triple jump, contributing 28 points to her team’s total.

On the boys side, sophomore Corey Moore won the shot put (50-9½) and discus (165-9), and senior David Washington swept the hurdles. Washington won the 110-meter high hurdles in 14.68 seconds, and took the 300 low hurdles in 39.8.

“We just have kids that chip in everywhere,” Walker said. “I’m proud of the effort today by all the guys.”

Washington hurt his foot during the last of the hurdle events and was unable to run in the 1,600 relay, where the Patriots finished fourth.

Liberty placed third in the 400 relay to hang onto first place.

“We had a little bit of an injury bug at the end of the meet,” Walker said. “But we just said to make sure we don’t drop the stick and if we do we pick it up and finish the race. We kind of figured there were no more points out there so we just had to make sure we got home and it was going to be alright.”

Bishop Gorman senior Nikolas Bracken won the 100 in 10.95, the 200 in 23.0 and helped his team to the title in the 800 relay where the Gaels finished in 1:30.15. Bracken was named the boys Athlete of the Meet.

Contact reporter Bill Slane at bslane@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4559. Follow @bill_slane on Twitter.