It was a historic afternoon at Hillsborough for Florence sophomore Barone VanKline, who won the 100-meter dash at the Central Jersey Group 1 sectionals with a meet-record 10.85.
VanKline won the 100 at last year’s meet as a freshman in 11.09 and then PR’d with an 11.06 when he placed 5th at states.
He broke that with an 11.05 to easily lead all qualifiers into the final and then ran away from the field in the final, winning by 2 ½ meters over another soph, Tyler Zacharczyk of Shore Regional, who was 2nd in 11.09.
The meet program lists a hand-time meet record of 10.6 by Efrain Cabrera of Keyport from 1988. In typical NJSIAA form, no FAT record is listed. So I had to look it up and it was 10.89 by Rontik Sadler of Dunellen from the 2010 Central Jersey Group 1 meet at Hillsborough.
So VanKline broke the real meet record by 4-100ths of a second.
Van Kline is the fastest sophomore in Group 1 from South Jersey since 2007, when Woodbury’s Shawney Kersey ran 10.60 at the Colonial Conference meet at Sterling.
Van Kline is the first Florence boy to win back-to-back sectional titles in the same event since hurdler Bernard Worthy in the 110 highs in 2012 and 2013.
From the Backstretch by Reuben Frank 