By Jack Pfeifer // Photo by John Nepolitan

The New York high school girl Samantha Watson, a junior at Rush-Henrietta, won the U.S. Juniors title in the 800 over the weekend and in the process qualified for this week’s Olympic Trials by surpassing the entry standard of 2:03.00.

Entering the Juniors meet, held in very hot conditions in Clovis, Calif., Watson stood at 2:03.06, thus expected to miss the Trials, but she improved just enough – to a personal best of 2:02.91 – to qualify for Eugene. By winning the U.S. Juniors, she also qualified for the U.S. team at the World Juniors later this summer. She narrowly defeated a Texas prep, Aaliyah Miller, who ran 2:02.96.

The McLaughlin siblings, Taylor and Sydney, won both 400-hurdle championships. Taylor, a freshman at Michigan, won the men’s title in 50.74, while his sister, a junior at Union Catholic (N.J.), won the women’s in 54.54, just .08 off the national high school record she set one week earlier.

In the process, Sydney pulled two of her rivals, Anna Cockrell of North Carolina and Brandee Johnson of Virginia, to lifetime bests of 55.89 and 56.16 respectively.

That wasn’t the only big hurdle news of the weekend. On Saturday in the women’s 100 hurdle prelims, Tia Jones, a 15-year-old 9^th-grader from Marietta, Ga., ran a phenomenal 12.84 to set a national high school record. Later in the day in the final, Jones lost to Alexis Duncan of Texas, 13.04 to 13.05.

The men’s dashes were very fast. Noah Lyles (T.C. Williams, Alexandria, Va.) won the 100 in a wind-aided 10.08, while Californian Michael Norman won the 200 in 20.15, just off the national record.

Virginian Kate Murphy, fresh off her 4:07 1,500, qualified for the 15 final here but then ran the 3,000 final instead, narrowly defeating Katie Rainsberger of Colorado in a fast 9:10.51 to 9:11.60. In Murphy’s absence, Alexa Efraimson, a pro runner who attends the University of Portland, won the 1,500 in 4:18.

On Friday, Bobby Colantonio of Rhode Island won the men’s hammer by four feet over Adam Kelly of Princeton, throwing 243-2 with the Junior implement.