Junior Leila Ortiz and seniors Maylisa Bluford and Alana Woolfolk all won their specialties Saturday to lead the Clayton girls to their 2nd state indoor Group 1 title in three years at the Bubble Saturday.
Clayton finished with a 41-34 margin of victory over Audubon, who won the closing 4-by-4 to move up from 3rd to 2nd. Clayton also won Group 1 in 2022 by a 77-42 margin over Burlington City.
Clayton’s big three of Ortiz, Bluford and Woolfolk were responsible for 38 of Clayton’s 42 points. With a 15-point lead over Hasbrouck Heights going into the 4-by-4, Clayton scratched its relay team.
Ortiz won the 55-meter dash in a personal-best 7.37 and also placed 2nd in the 400 in 59.79. Her previous 55 PR was a 7.41 at sectionals last weekend on the same track.
Bluford, sitting in 3rd place through three throws, threw 39-2 ¾ on her 4th and won by about a foot and a half. The state title is her second but first in the shot put. She won the Group 1 discus last spring at 129-3 at Franklin.
And Woolfolk won her 6th state title to go along with two Meet of Champions titles. She matched her lifetime-best 5-8, which she’s now cleared three times outdoors and twice indoors. That’s the Gloucester County indoor record and tied for No. 2 in South Jersey indoor history behind Timber Creek’s Tierra Hooker, who cleared 5-10 at Ocean Breeze in 2018. Woolfolk had a miss at 5-2 Saturday but was clean at 5-4, 5-6 and 5-8 before missing three attempts at 5-9. Her 5-8 tied the meet record set in 2011 by Alexa Williams of Jonathan Dayton High in Springfield, Union County.
Clayton junior Miyanna Johnson also scored in two events, placing 5th in the high jump at 5-0 and 6th in the 55-meter dash in 7.61.
For Audubon, sophomore Riley Fayer placed 3rd in the 800 [2:24.65] and 5th in the 1,600 [5:19.18], junior Elizabeth Butrica 2nd in the pole vault [10-0], sophomore Alaina Copsetta 3rd in the 400 [1:00.75] and senior Madelin Carter as 5th in the 800 [2:28.46], and the relay team of senior Arianna Bittner, sophomore Kylie Tocco, Carter and Copsetta ran 4:15.38 to edge 2nd-place Metuchen by 12-100ths of a second.
From the Backstretch by Reuben Frank 