A strong recovery

Shane Mettlen / Culpeper Star Exponent
Published: June 2, 2007

Jeff Ferris' weekend in Newport News almost got off to a disastrous start.

The Culpeper County High School senior opened the VHSL Group AAA State Track Meet in the preliminaries of the 300-meter hurdles and caught his shoe on the first hurdle. The near wipeout left the Blue Devils standout at the back of the field, but he recovered to finish the race in 40.62 seconds, not his best performance of the season, but good enough to finish 19th in the event.

More importantly though, Ferris managed to avoid injury and was able to run in Saturday's 110-meter high hurdles, an event he would make All-State in.

Ferris ran a personal best time of 14.44 seconds to take fourth place in the 110 hurdles, finishing less than 0.2 seconds behind Highland Park's Adams Abdulrazaaq, who wont he race in a time of 14.28 seconds. It looked for a moment to CCHS coach Kim Williams that Ferris might bring the Blue Devils a state title, but it wasn't in the cards. That didn't stop the Devils from celebrating the accomplishment.

"Jeff did a great job today," Williams said. "He ran the best race of his career. He had some ups and downs this season, but he ran a great race today."

Ferris' fourth-place finish gave the Blue Devils five points, good enough to finish 37th in the boys team scoring.

Ferris wasn't the only Culpeper County athlete to record a personal best at the state meet. Dira Hansen represented the CCHS girls in three events during the weekend and topped her best ever mark in the triple jump, going 35 feet, 7 inches to finish in 16th place.

"They just told me to try and extend my second stage of the triple jump and that really helped," Hansen said.

Hansen, who battled a respiratory illness over the weekend, also competed in the long jump and high jump, leaping 15-feet, 9 inches in the long jump. Hansen caught a tough break in the high jump when meet officials decided to start the event at 5-2, making Hansen one of 18 competitors to miss the opening height.

"She jumped very well," CCHS assistant coach Colleen Robsin said. "Sometimes at the state meet they are very specific and what they post in the program isn't always where they actually start out. It was a great feat for her to qualify in three events and she was not feeling great at all."

Two other Culpeper County athletes competed at the meet. Sophomore Steven Reynolds finished 23rd in the 800-meter run in a time of 2:03.34 and Terrance Fells-Danzer finished 23rd in the shot put with a heave of 43-feet, 5 ¾ inches.

"Terrance didn't do as well as he hoped," Williams said. "And we were hoping Steven Reynolds would do better, but he was a real competitor."

Shane Mettlen can be reached at 850-0771 ext. 127 or .