RSS Feed |
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Seventh grader earns silver, gold
She does not brag or boast. Malikka Sanford-Tolden only smiles to show her pride and speaks softly about her love for track competition. Sanford-Tolden is a member of Visions Track Club, a group based in Houston. The club competed in the Amateur Athletic Union Indoor National Championships at Merrillville, Ind. Feb. 15, 16 and 17. The daughter of Jacqline Sanford and Samuel Tolden, she claimed medals in two events as her team finished second in the girls 400-meter relay and she finished first individually in the 400-meter dash. The moment the medals were placed around her neck, the track star said, was wonderful. "It felt great, but I was so tired," Sanford-Tolden said. The exhaustion she felt was well worth the reward of many practices. She said she loves to run and has been doing it for several years. "When I was five years old, I was just sprinting and doing 100 and 200 (meter dash)," Sanford-Tolden said. "Then I started out with the 400 when I was about six. I started making good times." She currently runs as a member of the ECMS Lady 'Birds track team and has aspirations of championships with that team as well. "I'm going to represent El Campo Middle School by winning the gold medal in the 400," she said. "I'm going to try to break some of my Auntie's records." Her aunt, Tiki Owens, holds seventh-grade school records in the long jump and triple jump. While she has not had a chance at making her mark in those events, Sanford-Tolden has set records this year. She broke Heather Shorter's school records set in 1998 in the 100, 200 and 400-meter dashes in the Wharton Junior High Track Meet Feb. 22. Her time of 12.56 beat out Shorter's 12.75 in the 100-meter dash while she beat Shorter's 27.09 in the 200-meter dash with a time of 26.40. The third record to fall was Shorter's 1:02.58 in the 400-meter dash. Sanford-Tolden ran that event in 1:00.10. In only a short time as a member of the track team, she has made her mark on El Campo Middle School. As Coach Nancy Humphreys put it, "It is a sight to see her run." |
for larger version       |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
)