By NICK KOSKO
Correspondent
On a cool afternoon, many high school athletes took their marks and starting positions to compete against the best competition in the Cape-Atlantic League. The meet was an opportunity to improve seeding for sectionals and get some experience against great athletes to prep for even more intense competition in the coming weeks. Egg Harbor Township hosted the meet and also performed quite well, according to head coach Ryan Smith. Alvin Abraham ran the 400-meter dash and finished first with a time of 49.51 seconds. Vincent DelConte also captured a CAL title for EHT with a first-place finish in the 1600, clocking in at 4:31. He also won the mile at last week’s Atlantic County Championships. 
Kevin Stokes, right, anchors Oakcrest’s winning 4×400-meter relay team during Thursday’s Cape-Atlantic League track championships at Egg Harbor Township High School. (Glory Days Magazine photos/Dave O’Sullivan) “With this meet, it’s not team scored but you can definitely improve with each individual event and we definitely did that today. We got a personal record from Malcolm Lee in the shot put, which is huge for seeding in sectionals. A couple of individual titles goes a long way toward next week and it was just a great day for us,” Smith said. St. Joseph produced a CAL champion in senior Rocco Ordille, who plans to attend Bucknell University on a football scholarship in the fall. Ordille won the 100-meter dash in 10.82 seconds. The win was impressive considering Ordille missed most of the football season with a knee injury. 
Alyssa Aldridge, left, of Mainland Regional, and Ocean City’s Devon Grisbaum battle it out around the bend during the 3,200. “I definitely felt stronger than last week and my knee wasn’t acting up, so I felt pretty good out there. I want to see improvement each race, and hopefully by the Meet of Champions I take the title,” Ordille said. The 4×400 proved to be exciting, as Oakcrest took first with the combination of of Kevin Stokes, Tyler Clybourn, Oliver Paul and Ali-Quan Stokes. Kevin Stokes, a senior, anchored the event and helped his team record a time of 3:26. “It’s a good feeling to know we came out on top. We just had to run our race today. No matter how long the race, everyone is running the same distance so you always have to give it your all in order to finish first,” Stokes said. Earlier in the meet, the Absegami girls 4×800 broke a school record with a time of 10:32. Shannon Stonnell, Madeline Lewis, Ellen Gonzalez and Kathleen Ngo became the fastest two-mile girls relay squad in school history. In one of the final few events, Ocean City star distance runner Devon Grisbaum, who won the cross country Meet of Champions last fall, breezed to a victory in the 3,200 meters. Also, Egg Harbor Township’s Brandon Truong threw a personal-best 153 feet, 2 inches in the javelin to qualify for emerging elites nationals in North Carolina.
