Kent Island High junior Sarah Van Ornum won her second state title Thursday, winning the girls’ 3,200 meters at the 2A state outdoor championships.

Kent Island High junior Sarah Van Ornum won her second state title Thursday, winning the girls’ 3,200 meters at the 2A state outdoor championships.

Sarah Van Ornum has not been pushed much this outdoor track season.

Kent Island High’s junior standout was pushed Thursday and it led to a state championship.

Part of a tight pack over seven laps, Van Ornum started her kick entering the final lap and held off Hereford freshman Sylvia Snider to win the girls’ 3,200-meter title during the first day of the Class 2A state outdoor track and field championships at the Prince George’s Sports and Learning Complex in Landover.

Van Ornum clocked a season-best time of 11 minutes, 21.24 seconds, while Sylvia Snider took second in 11:23.54. Snider’s older Estelle Snider was third in 11:29.55.

“It felt really rewarding because I PR’d by about 14 seconds,” said Van Ornum, whose previous season-best was an 11:37 at the Bullis Invitational in April.

The lead changed hands several times during the early stages of the race before Sylvia Snider moved to the front of the pack in the latter half. The Hereford freshman maintained that lead before Van Ornum made her move heading into the bell lap.

“The whole time I was just focused on staying in second and keeping my space until the last lap,” Van Ornum said during a phone interview. “At that point I knew I could just sprint and give it all I had.”

Van Ornum had been dropping huge chunks of time as the season entered its championship stretch. She won the 3,200 at the North Bayside championships in 13:05.17, ran away with the Bayside Conference title in 12:45.52, then won last week’s 2A East Regional title with a 11:21.24.

“She is about as hard a worker as I’ve seen in a long time,” Kent Island head coach Justin Holland said of Van Ornum. “You can give her work and she just goes and does it. I love that. Coach (Kristen) Park built up her distance and we switched her over to me, and I got her a little top-end speed, and it really showed at this meet after she ran with the girls for awhile and then decided it’s time to go, and took off and that was it.”

It was Van Ornum’s first outdoor state title. She became the first girl in school history to win an individual state title indoors when she won the 3,200 meters in February.

Kent Island’s boys’ 4x200-meter relay team of Alex Ransone, Will Ransone, Evan Newcomer and Trevor Thomas finished third in a school-record 1:30.9. And sophomore Gabby Bernhard took bronze in the girls’ pole vault at 10 feet, becoming the just the third girl in school history to clear a double-digit height.

Cambridge-South Dorchester senior John Condon finished third in the boys’ Class 1A 3,200 meters.

Follow me on Twitter @Bill_Haufe. Email me at bhaufe@stardem.com

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