By the time Malia Rainey finished popping out of the starting blocks, surging through her drive phase, raising her eyes to level with the track and reaching the 50-meter mark, she knew.
She was just seconds away from becoming a state champion.
The Calabasas High junior nailed her start and never looked back, earning a wire-to-wire victory in the girls 100-meter dash in 11.38 seconds at the CIF-State Track and Field Championships on Saturday, May 30, at Buchanan High School in Clovis.
“My start has been something me and my coaches have been working on since time itself,” Rainey said. “I was telling myself I just need to get out, get ahead of the pack. I already knew that my top-end speed was there, so all that was in my head was getting my start down, staying strong, staying vigilant and making sure that my start could lead me to a great finish.”
To win a state title, Rainey had to first outrun relay heartbreak.
She was part of the Coyotes relay team that ran one of the fastest times in state history earlier this season before their dreams of a state title and national record came crashing to a halt. Rainey and teammate Devyn Sproles dropped the baton at the second exchange in the CIF-Southern Section Championship final, ending their postseason abruptly.
The devastating moment lit a fire under Rainey.
“We were supposed to be No. 1. We were supposed to have that state title for the 4×100. It was definitely heartbreaking,” Rainey said. “We still had more in us, we still had more to give.”
When the blur in lane five clarified back into human form, she was chased down by teammates Olivia Kirk (fifth place, 11.53) and Marley Scoggins (8th, 11.62), who celebrated alongside her.
“Those are my girls,” Rainey said. “It was a big moment for us — they have been pushing me.”
Rainey won CIF-Southern Section Division 3 and Masters titles leading up to the state meet. She became the first local athlete since Oaks Christian’s Niya Clayton in 2023 to win a state title in the girls 100.
The Coyotes also showed up in the girls 200 meters, with Kirk finishing third in 23.64 and Scoggins running to fifth in 23.89. Those marks powered Calabasas to a fifth-place finish as a team.
It was an historic meet for the Moorpark track and field program, which had five podium finishes to cap a season that saw 14 program records fall. The girls team was 24th out of 92 schools and the boys placed 35th out of 98.
The team’s best finish of the meet was mired in controversy.
Senior long jumper Gianna Gonzalez leapt to one of great marks in Ventura County history, but tied with Ellie McCluskey-Hay of St. Ignatius.
Gonzalez’s mark of 20 feet, 3.5 inches, in the girls long jump was the fourth-best mark by a county athlete and the best in 33 years. It was 10.5 inches farther than she had ever jumped before.
She was crowned the champion at the end of the competition, but McCluskey-Hay’s mark was later corrected due to an error, according to Moorpark head coach Christian Dearborn.
The tie between the two athletes was broken by their next-best jump, which belonged to McCluskey-Hay. Moorpark’s appeal of the result was denied and Gonzalez was awarded second place.
The Moorpark boys 4×100-meter relay team of Kade Hunter, Jalen Aguilar-Carnes, Payton Sustin and Davis Benson already held the Ventura County record when the foursome took to the track on Friday, May 29, for the preliminary heats of the event but added one more accolade in running 40.94 seconds to qualify for the final. It was the fastest time by a county team at the state meet. The Musketeers finished seventh in the final in 41.14.
Benson, the multi-event junior, accounted for two of the Moorpark podium finishes. He earned a sixth-place finish in the long jump on his final attempt with a leap of 23-4.25 and ran 14.01 in the 110-meter hurdles to place eighth.
Ventura County 200-meter record-holder Jalen Aguilar-Carnes placed ninth in the event at state in 21.28 after running the fastest wind-legal team by a county athlete in the prelims in 21.21.
Moorpark freshman Camilla Peltonen ran 56.19 in the prelims of the girls 400 to place 19th and 24.43 in the 200 meters for 15th.
Joining Peltonen among the top freshman performances at the meet were the area’s precocious distance stars in the 3,200 meters.
Oaks Christian’s Sterling White, fresh off setting a California freshman record in the event at the CIF-SS Masters, finished on the podium in eighth place with a time of 9:01.72. He finished four spots ahead of Rio Mesa’s Derek Luna, who was 12th in 9:03.77.
In the girls 3,200 meters, sisters Anais and Sabina Cruz of Westlake finished 18th and 20th, respectively, in 10:40.71 and 10:52.04.
The Ventura County record-holder in the boys 100-meter dash, Newbury Park senior Jaden Griffin, became the first sprinter in program history to place in the state final in the event. He finished fifth in 10.41.
Oak Park sophomore Gwyneth Murieka cleared 5-4 in the girls high jump to finish in a four-way tie for fourth place while Nieve Oliver of Camarillo, who also cleared 5-4 was tied for eighth due to a miss at an earlier height.
Oaks Christian senior Vin Krueger ran the third-fastest time by any area athlete in the prelims of the boys 1,600 meters in 4:07.93 to qualify for the final, where he finished 12th in 4:17.24. Oaks Christian senior Delaney Napierala was ninth in her heat of the girls 1,600 meters in 4:52.93.
Thousand Oaks senior Caleb Romeo finished four spots out of the final in the boys 400 meters, running 47.99 to place 13th overall. Teammate Lucas Schneider placed sixth in the 300-meter hurdles in a time of 37.67. The pair were joined by teammates Alex Molinar and Jacob Maamoun on the 4×400 relay, which finished seventh in 3:18.52.
Dominic Massimino is a staff writer for The Star. He can be reached at dominic.massimino@vcstar.com. For more coverage, follow @vcsdominic on Twitter and Instagram.
This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: Calabasas High’s Malia Rainey surges to state title in 100-meter dash
Reporting by Dominic Massimino, Ventura County Star / Ventura County Star
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