(110 hurdles at Metro championships – video by Doug Cooper)

More athletic achievements for local students – this time at the Metro League track championships.

Doug Cooper, who coaches hurdles for the West Seattle High School track team, shared the videos and news of some big achievements in that sport:

Chaaka Trahan, a senior at West Seattle High School, ran a sizzling time of 14.20 seconds in the 110m high hurdles to win the league title in the event at Friday’s Metro League Championship meet at the SWAC track.

Trahan also won the Metro League title in the Long Jump with a jump of 22’7, and then added a third title to his collection for the day when he and fellow standout hurdler Cass Elliott and sprinters Rylee Farrison and Miles Hairston teamed up to smash yet another school record in the 4×400 relay and bring home the Metro League title in the process.

If all that wasn’t enough, Trahan added a 2nd place finish in one of the very best Metro League 300 hurdles finals in recent memory:

(300 hurdles at Metro championships – video by Kelsey Lenzie)

Trahan and Elliott finished 2nd (39.49 seconds) and 3rd (39.63) to Nathan Hale’s Tremaine McAdams (38.49). These times from their race on Friday vaulted Elliott, Trahan, and McAdams into the top 5 fastest recorded times in the entire State this season.

Trahan and Elliott led a strong cast of athletes on West Seattle’s Boys team to a 4th-place overall finish in the 16-school Seattle Metro League, which is considered by many to be the most competitive league in the state. All of them along with a great girls’ team which finished 8th in the league will be back in action at SWAC Track near Chief Sealth IHS this upcoming Wednesday (5/18) and Friday (5/20) for the Sea-King District Championship meet. Both meets kick off at 4:00 pm.

Cooper added that Trahan’s 14.2 in the 110 may have broken a half-century-old WSHS record – 14.3 by Al Karlberg in 1965 – but more research needs to be done, he explains, because “hand times were used back then and automated or converted automatic times are used now.”

He also adds that Quinn Wiley, a Chief Sealth International High School hurdler who trains with WSHS because Sealth has no hurdles coach on staff, won the girls’ 300 Metro League title – despite never hurdling until this year! She had, Cooper says, “one of the best times in the state, 45.93 seconds!”

Other WSHS and CSIHS track athletes did well at the championships – as you’ll see if you review the results list here.