Bria Jay twice flashed her speed, then twice flashed a long smile of satisfaction atop the awards podium.

Overcoming her notoriously bad starts, the Plum sprinter swept past the field in the 100- and 200-meter dashes Friday at the Mars Invitational.

"It's a secret of mine that I know I'm going to come out of the blocks badly, and I catch up with speed," Jay said, laughing. "It's a good thing sometimes to have people in front of you to push you."

Despite a misstep out of the blocks, Jay recovered to capture gold in the 100-meter dash with a time of 12.86 seconds. Thanks to a late burst, the California (Pa.) recruit won by a photo finish over North Hills' Brittney Traynor. Hours later, she won the 200 in 26.37.

Plum coach Joe Ionta reluctantly agreed with his sprinter's assessment.

"The fact she stumbled showed you her tremendous top speed," he said. "I'm sure (Cal U coach) Roger Kingdom will be able to help her with that a little more than I can."

Jay also received the meet's first C. Norman Crawford Memorial Award, named after one of the patriarchs of girls' track in Western Pennsylvania. She also shared the girls track MVP award with Knoch's Regina Robb.

"Hopefully, there's more to come, but I'm pretty satisfied with where I stood today," said Robb, who ran a personal best in the 300 hurdles (46.28 seconds). "Now is really the time to focus on our individual events. Now that we won section, our coach sees that as a higher priority."

The Knoch girls had two first-place winners — Allyson Cress (38-6 1/2 in the shot put) and Robb, who finished second in the 100 hurdles. Cress got silver in the discus.

The undefeated Knights also placed a close third in the overall team standings.

In a mild surprise, the Freeport boys finished second in the team standings — two points behind champion North Hills and one ahead of third-place Seneca Valley, both Class AAAA schools. Class AA Freeport had only one individual first-place winner, Nick Gentile (1:57.49 in the 800).

"Not bad for a school that's going to graduate 145 this spring," Freeport coach Bill Dillen said. "We don't come down here to win trophies, but we were WPIAL runner-up last year, so we're pretty battle-tested."

The Plum boys' 3200 relay team of Bryce Rupp, Sam Griffiths, Matt Betts and Nate Andrews set a meet record of 8:04.49. That beat the previous mark of 8:05, set by Fairview in 2004. Rupp stood out by running his leg in under 1:58.

"They've been running together since they were freshmen, but we didn't exactly expect them to set a record, especially since 80 degrees isn't really ideal conditions," Ionta said. "Those guys are like a family. They all work together and there are times they run their workouts harder than we'd even like."

Deer Lakes senior Kristin Romutis not only achieved an upset, winning gold in the girls javelin with a jump of 9-feet, 3 inches, but she made her older brother look like a fortune teller.

"Last night, I called him up at school and he said, 'You're going to win gold tomorrow,' but I didn't believe him," said Romutis, whose previous career best was 9-feet. "I had a slow start after spraining my ankle the day before the season, so it's nice to get over that rough start."

Among last year's individual champions from the A-K Valley, only Jay successfully defended her titles. Plum's Dom Siciliano (long jump) and Springdale's Alexa Sarfield (400) placed third and fifth, respectively.

In addition, despite indicating earlier this week that he would not compete, Springdale's Tyler Lelis finished sixth in the 110 hurdles.

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