The Thunder hosted the famous Becky Matthews Invitational this past Friday, April 1st, 2022. The meet honors the late Becky Matthews, who was a teacher at Kyrene Altadena Middle School and a jumps coach at Desert Vista. Matthews wanted to ensure her athletes were the best that they could be inside and outside of track and field. Sadly, Becky Matthews lost her battle with cancer, and thus the Desert Vista Track and Field program created a meet that honored Matthews as a coach, teacher, and mentor for her athletes. The meet is a great opportunity for the Thunder to host every track season. Not only were they hosting, but both the Varsity Girls and Varsity Boys teams took home the victory. 

With 18 women’s varsity teams competing at the invite, there was considerable competition. Regardless of the competition, strong performances in the 400-meter dash by seniors Lucy Lovelace and Paige Deignan, and second-place finishes in the 4×8 and the 4×4 relay, the thunder were in an incredible position to win the meet. With a combined score of 122, the girls dominated with Sunrise Mountain far behind, in second place, with 93 points. With the meet being state-qualifying, it will be exciting to see what the girls will do against these teams looking ahead to May.

On the boys’ side, 19 teams competed, all in the hunt for victory. Varsity team captain, Michael Allison (11) was a major piece of the puzzle, placing in the top 10 in both the 100 and 200-meter dash. Coach Trent Elliott remarks highly of Allison’s performance this past weekend, “Michael works hard every day at practice and it has been fun to see his times improve every week. Right now Michael has some of the fastest times in the 100 and 200 in the state and I’m excited to see him improve each week on the way to the state track meet.”Another junior, Ben Sklodowski, took first place in the 110m hurdles helping to further secure the thunder victory. The boys finished the day with a combined score of 133, placing them ahead of the second-place team by an impressive 57 points. The boy’s Frosh/Soph team also competed, taking first place as well with a high score of 135 points. With this performance, the boy’s team shows strong performances for the coming years due to such depth and skill on their junior varsity team. 

Both the boys and girls track and field teams have brought the thunder this season, and are only hungry for more. You can watch the team compete next on Friday, April 6th, at Westwood Highschool for the annual Hohokam Warrior Invitational.