Santa Barbara High’s Andreas Dybdahl and Blaise Snow advanced out of their qualifying heats in their respective events on Friday and will run for titles on Saturday at the CIF State Track & Field Championships at Buchanan High in Clovis.
“Really smart, well-executed races for both of them,” Dons coach Olivia Perdices said. “We talked about being sure they were in the automatic qualifiers and not leaving anything to chance.
“Both moved through without any drama and didn’t do any more work than they had to.”
Dybdahl will defend his title in the boys 1,600. He finished second in the first heat and posted the third-fastest time out of the two qualifying heats.
He ran 4:10.73 to finish behind Jonah Reynolds (4:10.59) of Jesuit High of the Sac-Joaquin Section and earned a spot in Saturday night’s final.
Heat 2 winner Emmanuel Perez of Los Angeles Cathedral High ran the second-fastest 1600 with a time of 4:11.69
The UCLA-bound Dybdahl won last year’s state title in a time of 4:08.64. He became Santa Barbara High’s first state champion since Sam Cunningham won the shot put in 1969.
Also advancing to the 12-runner 1,600 final were Ventura’s Anthony Fast Horse (4:10.76) and Micah Grossman (4:11.97).
Snow finished third in the second of three qualifying heats of the boys 800 meters. The junior was clocked in 1:53.27, the eighth-fastest time overall.
Wyland Obando of Long Beach Wilson won the second heat in 1:52.66 and JtKraemer of Wilson was second in 1:52.94.
The top qualifying time was turned in by Chris Evans of Calabasas in 1:51.88.
Santa Barbara’s boys 4×800 relay will be running on Saturday. The Dons have the third fastest time of the 18 teams competing. Their 7:44.99 is behind Cathedral (7:42.19) and Clemente (7:43.92) of the Southern Section.
“That’s more guys than we’ve had in the state finals since I’ve been at Santa Barbara,” Perdices said. “We’re really looking forward to tomorrow. As Andreas showed last year, once you’re in the finals, it’s anyone’s game.”